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Comment by ropiku | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone know if they support HTTP/2 on the backend side too ? They didn't with SPDY and I think it would help to multiplex connections all the way.

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Not right now. We are currently experimenting with Server Push because we think it will help with the end user experience more than HTTP/2 to the origin server. You can see that running on the experimental server https://http2.cloudflare.com/

The question is... does HTTP/2 on the backend help that much. We aren't restricted like a browser in terms of bandwidth, latency or number of connections we can open. Greatest benefit for HTTP/2 is between browser and us, but origin HTTP/2 hasn't been forgotten.

Surely HTTP/2 to the origin server will reduce latency between Cloudflare and the origin server and thus reduce overall latency to the browser?

Yes, but you have to look at the mix of things being delivered to the client. For a typical CloudFlare customer you'll have some dynamic HTML delivered all the way from the origin and then a bunch of static assets delivered from our cache. HTTP/2 between us and the browser is very valuable there, less so on the origin connection.

I see. That's fair enough. Thanks.

I've love to see CloudFlare enable admins to utilize Server Push without extra configuration on their backend.

My ideal situation is one where I can have my webapp specify it's dependencies through a spec such as Server Hints[1], and have them be requested and cached edge-side, turned into a Server Push to the end user.

[1]: https://www.chromium.org/spdy/link-headers-and-server-hint/l...

Stay tuned.

Wouldn't HTTP/2 to origin give most of the benefits of Railgun, other than the change delta acceleration?

Seems like for high traffic sites and APIs the persistent non-blocking multiplexed connections with binary transfer might make a big difference?

I think Instart Logic uses the same kind of model in between their proxy nodes called IPTP (inter-proxy transport protocol).

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