- From: Willy Tarreau <w@1wt.eu>
- Date: Sun, 20 Dec 2020 07:51:11 +0100
- To: Ian Swett <ianswett@google.com>
- Cc: Tommy Pauly <tpauly@apple.com>, HTTP Working Group <ietf-http-wg@w3.org>, Mark Nottingham <mnot@mnot.net>
On Sat, Dec 19, 2020 at 03:38:56PM -0500, Ian Swett wrote:
> A question for the working group is: Are there servers that are going to
> actively pursue GREASE in H2? We might do some, but it'll be limited in
> scope due to past issues.
I'd say "it depends". I'm seeing two impacts of enabling GREASE on the
server side:
- a lot of server-side users don't want to disclose what technologies
they are using, and try hard to limit the visible signatures outside.
By having a server start to emit random frame types, it will
inevitably sign itself.
- a large number of performance testing tools do not care about standards
since the goal is to focus on performance, and I suspect that when such
tools will be used against a grease-enabled server, they will report
failures that will scare their users away.
All these could be addressed by having an option to disable greasing, but
in both cases users will be fooled. The first ones will consider the server
had purposely cheated on them. The second ones won't go past the initial
test and will declare the server as bogus. And by having an option to
explicitly enable greasing, well, I doubt users will enable it "for the
sake of improving the net" if they know it can cause some trouble to them.
If we could figure a way to make GREASE provide some benefit to server-side
users and encourage voluntary deployment, that would be nice. For example,
having search engines improve the ranking when greasing is detect could be
very effective for this. Just an idea.
Willy
Received on Sunday, 20 December 2020 06:51:34 UTC