Timeline for HTTP/2 Support
We haven't spoken publicly enough about our plans for supporting HTTP/2. I apologize for not giving customers more details.
Fastly is focused on performance and uptime. Platform stability is always our primary concern, and we take the implementation of major new features seriously. We will always insist that every component of the Fastly platform is fully integrated, as we don't limit features to subsets of our network. This means that we take extra care as we're deciding on architectures, assessing problem-solving approaches, testing proofs of concept, and implementing features.
When we began working on our HTTP/2 strategy, we needed to answer a lot of questions:
Do we start with an open source proxy that supports HTTP/2 and integrate it with Varnish on the back-end?
Do we build HTTP/2 into our Varnish implementation?
Do we start from scratch and build our own HTTP/2 server?
How do we accurately understand HTTP/2 interoperability with our Web Application Firewall (WAF) plans?
What will be the effect on performance for our customers with different types of traffic?
Should our customers get HTTP/2 by default or should they have the ability to opt in?
How concerned are we about the effect of packet loss on head-of-line blocking with TCP?
Should there be measurement strategies in place to make sure our customers are getting the benefits they think the protocol should provide?
We’re now at a point where we’re starting to answer some of these important questions. To help, I’m happy to announce that Marty Kagan, co-founder and former CTO of Cedexis, has joined Fastly as Vice President of Engineering. We've recently restructured some of our internal engineering teams in an effort to improve shipping velocity, and dedicated resources are working on an HTTP/2 strategy that meets Fastly standards.
We know this is an important subject for our customers, and we are working on it. Limited Availability for HTTP/2 will be available in Q2 with General Availability by the end of the year – customers can expect more details about how to sign up for Limited Availability in the coming weeks.
