RE: Call for Proposals re: #314 HTTP2 and http:// URIs on the "open" internet

> Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2013 08:28:26 +0100
> From: w@1wt.eu
> To: adrien@qbik.com
> CC: jasnell@gmail.com; mnot@mnot.net; derhoermi@gmx.net; ietf-http-wg@w3.org
> Subject: Re: Call for Proposals re: #314 HTTP2 and http:// URIs on the "open" internet
> 
> On Wed, Nov 20, 2013 at 04:08:49AM +0000, Adrien de Croy wrote:
> > 
> > my 2c is that http/2.0 (TLS or not) is enough of a departure from http, 
> > that trying to put plaintext http/2.0 over port 80 will just be an 
> > impossible nightmare.
> 
> Changing the port will require to change the scheme as well otherwise
> it will end up being even worse. For example, *right now* over the net
> and even much more in corporate networks, you have many applications
> running on non-80 ports. So when the browser will have to connect to
> "http://foo.bar.tld:8080/", what version will it use ? We could decide
> that it will only use HTTP/1 but then we'll have a hard time migrating
> everything to 2.0, especially considering that developers are the
> primary users of random ports which allow them to put a lot of stuff
> and versions on the same development server. So anyway even if we use
> another port, we'll need the protocols to be distinguishable from 1.x,
> going back to the HTTP Upgrade again. So then a new port will not bring
> any benefit (well, just more transparency for now) and will cause other
> issues (blocked ports).
> 

A new scheme means changing stuff at other layers (HTML, links in emails, lots of other places). We could do something like this:
* http://www.example.com  - soon: happy eyeballs.  later: attempts HTTP/2 and fallback if that fails.* http://www.example.com:80 - HTTP/1* http://www.example.com:100 - attempt HTTP/2 and fallback if that fails.* http://www.example.com:xxxxx - soon: begin with HTTP/1, upgrade if you get an alt-svc for the same port.  later on: attempt HTTP/2 and fallback if that fails.
Not pretty, but getting people to migrate to giving out http2:// urls is something I don't think is going to happen.
Yoav