gabe pruitt course: HTTP standards group looks to SPDY protocol to influence HTTP/2.0

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

HTTP standards group looks to SPDY protocol to influence HTTP/2.0

Google's SPDY protocol is already gaining traction among web browsing heavyweights such as Chrome and Firefox, but its next step may be its biggest showing to date -- albeit in a different form. According to Mark Nottingham, the chairperson of the committee behind the HTTP protocol, a decision was made to focus on SPDY as the starting point for HTTP/2.0 discussion. Now, in case you couldn't tell, this is far from a sure thing, and as is, the HTTPBIS Working Group is currently targeting 2014 for the new specification's release. The decision is important, however, as the group seems intent to not reinvent the wheel with HTTP/2.0.

While Nottingham made it clear that SPDY wouldn't serve as an outright replacement for HTTP -- for example, the "methods, status codes, and most of the headers" will remain the same -- there's now a high likelihood that SPDY will heavily influence the new protocol. Up next, Nottingham will open the discussion to the group's mailing list, and after that, approval will be sought from the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Once those steps are out of the way, however, we can expect work to begin in earnest toward the development of HTTP/2.0, and hopefully, a lot of speedy influences.