Next Version Of HTTP Will Replace TCP With Google’s QUIC

The next version of the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is set to replace the currently used Transmission Control Protocol with Google’s experimental protocol QUIC.

Officials at Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) have said that the HTTP-over QUIC protocol will be renamed to HTTP version 3 and will serve as the official version of the HTTP protocol. QUIC stands for Quick UDP Internet Connections, and the experimental protocol uses UDP (User Datagram Protocol) instead of TCP.

Contemporarily used HTTP versions including 1.0, 1.1 and 2 are all layered on the top of TCP that ensures safe and reliable transfer of data between two computers. HTTP-over QUIC will use Google’s QUIC as the base technology instead of TCP.

QUIC is an improved version of TCP protocol and combines the best features of HTTP/2, TCP, UDP, and TLS. As compared to the TCP protocol, QUIC has been found faster and more secure owing to its encrypted-by-default implementation. After HTTP-over-QUIC was proposed in 2016, Google added its support in Chrome 29 and Opera 16 also supported it. From this year, Facebook also started using the nascent technology.

Mark Nottingham, IETF’s chairman officially requested to rename the HTTP-over QUIC as HTTP/3. After some discussions, Nottingham’s proposal has been accepted by ITEF members and an official announcement will be made soon.

HTTP-over QUIC will become the second experimental protocol from Google that will be used as the official HTTP protocol. Earlier, Google’s SPDY technology became the base of HTTP version 2.

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