Any advantage activating http2 on apache?

[born2run]

Hi so I’ve installed ssl now folks advise me to install http/2 on my apache site.

Is this worth it? Please advise thanks!

[Peter_S]

Yes, it is.

[keyplyr]

Some advantages to using HTTP/2 are:

• Single Connection. Only one connection to the server is used to load a website, and that connection remains open as long as the website is open. This reduces the number of round trips needed to set up multiple TCP connections.

• Multiplexing. Multiple requests are allowed at the same time, on the same connection. Previously, with HTTP/1.1, each transfer would have to wait for other transfers to complete.

• Server Push. Additional resources can be sent to a client for future use.

• Prioritization. Requests are assigned dependency levels that the server can use to deliver higher priority resources faster.

• Binary. Makes HTTP/2 easier for a server to parse, more compact and less error-prone. No additional time is wasted translating information from text to binary, which is the computer’s native language.

• Header Compression. HTTP/2 uses HPACK compressions, which reduces overhead. Many headers were sent with the same values in every request in HTTP/1.1

Short answer... your site will load much faster :)

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[robzilla]

Performance-wise, the order tends to be HTTPS (1.1) < HTTP (1.1) < HTTPS (2).

So just enabling HTTPS on HTTP/1.1 slows you down, enabling HTTP/2 speeds you back up... and beyond.

[not2easy]

You can read more and see a demo of the speed differences on this older post I wanna go fast: HTTP2's massive speed advantage [webmasterworld.com]

[keyplyr]

Related links:

What is HTTP/2? [webmasterworld.com]

HTTP/2 Check [tools.keycdn.com]

HTTP/2 FAQ [http2.github.io]

Browsers that support HTTP/2 [caniuse.com]

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[born2run]

Thanks as always guys I’ll be enabling http2 with ssl for sure

[born2run]

A question I read browsers won’t use http2 if the url has http instead of https ie ssl. Is this correct?

[keyplyr]

...browsers won’t use http2 if the url has http instead of https ie ssl. Is this correct?

@born2run - Yes. Although browsers are *capable* of using HTTP/2 with the HTTP protocol, all the major browsers decided they would not, and only support HTTP/2 over secure pages that use HTTPS.

...I’ll be enabling http2 with ssl for sure

You mean "TLS."
(SSL is no longer used.)

[born2run]

So now with ssl should I have https in the canonical links or http or relative is fine? Thanks!

[robzilla]

HTTPS only. Are you redirecting from HTTP to HTTPS yet?

[born2run]

Yes, I'll be redirecting http to https I'm in the process of setting up the software so been busy.

And so I'll change all canonical links in my html code to https only. Thanks!

[born2run]

robzilla so the canonical links have to be https and absolute?

[robzilla]

Ideally, yes.