The backbone of the web has received a major upgrade. The HTTP/3 protocol has received RFC 9114 standardization – a boost for internet security, but not one without hurdles for web developers.

This week, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) released HTTP/3, published as RFC 9114.

The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) acts as an application layer for facilitating communication between servers and browsers, fetching resources, and transferring data. HTTPS is HTTP with additional security via encryption.

HTTP/3 is the latest revision of the HTTP protocol, taking over from 2015’s HTTP/2. HTTP/3 is designed to address some of the performance issues inherent in HTTP/2, improving the user experience, decreasing the impact of packet loss without head-of-line blocking, speeding up handshake requirements, and enabling encryption by default.

The protocol utilizes space congestion control over User Datagram Protocol (UDP).One of the major differences in HTTP/3 is QUIC. Developed by Google, Quick UDP Internet Connections (QUIC) was adopted by the IETF, and a tailored version provides a cornerstone of HTTP/3.

Cloudflare predicts that 8% of internet traffic is HTTP/1-based, followed by HTTP/2 at 67%, and HTTP/3 at 25%.

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