Fastly HTTP/3 and QUIC

Provide a better digital experience for your end users with HTTP/3 & QUIC

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Fastly supports HTTP/3 over QUIC on our edge cloud network, which allows our customers to provide a better digital experience for their end users.

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What are HTTP/3 and QUIC?

Web browsers, web servers, and other critical pieces of web infrastructure are getting support with the new standard HTTP/3, which uses QUIC. This is the modern version of HTTP, which web browsers use to communicate with web servers and send data back and forth.

As the internet’s protocols evolve, so too do our experiences using them. HTTP/3 is the third major version of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol used to exchange information on the World Wide Web, and will do so over QUIC — the new transport protocol set to replace TCP. Together, HTTP/3 and QUIC are already seeing wide deployment with well over 500,000 services (and growing) using the new protocol globally. After more than six years of building, reframing, and refinement, these new protocols are primed to modernize the internet in a number of ways: deliver better digital experiences, empower faster innovation and built-in encryption, just to name a few. 

Fastly supports HTTP/3 over QUIC on our edge cloud network, which allows our customers to provide a better digital experience for their end users, but most notably for their mobile subscribers and subscribers in parts of the world that have unreliable Internet service.

HTTP/3 benefits:

Better digital experiences

Reduces latency and rebuffering Avoids head-of-line blocking both at the application and transport layer enabling reliable delivery and congestion control

Faster innovation

Using user space versus kernel development

Built-in encryption

Built in encryption (TLS 1.3)

The transport protocol we use needs to adapt and evolve if it is to continue serving as an effective glue between increasingly demanding applications and the chaotic underlying internet.

Deliver a better experience globally

QUIC allows web traffic to flow faster because it’s designed to avoid head-of-line blocking and offers a low-latency handshake that significantly reduces rebuffering. These innovations modernize the internet and improve digital experiences for all users, but especially for mobile users and those around the globe with less-than-reliable internet service.

Low latency-handshake:

Low latency-handshake diagram image

Integrate deeper to innovate faster

Because QUIC runs in userspace, it integrates seamlessly with Fastly’s tooling, tracing, and logging infrastructure. This will eventually make it easier for developers to run and learn from experiments, enabling more rapid deployment and evolution of sites and apps.

Secure more with built-in encryption

TLS 1.3 — the latest version of the Transport Layer Security protocol — is built directly into QUIC. This design more effectively secures headers and metadata from third parties, ensuring more private, trustworthy connections than ever before. 



Blog Post
Loveholidays improves performance

Loveholidays P75 time to first byte has improved by 18% for all clients with HTTP/3 enabled

Blog Post
QUIC is now RFC 9000

QUIC is a new latency-reducing, reliable, and secure internet transport protocol that is slated to replace TCP, the most commonly used transport today

Web Page
Put your connection to the test

Is your browser running on HTTP/3 and QUIC right now? We built http3.is to help.

Meet a more powerful global network.

Our network is all about greater efficiency. With our strategically placed points of presence (POPs), you can scale on-demand and deliver seamlessly during major events and traffic spikes. Get the peace of mind that comes with truly reliable performance — wherever users may be browsing, watching, shopping, or doing business.

377 Tbps

Edge network capacity1

150 ms

Mean purge time with Instant Purge™

>1.8 trillion

Daily requests served4

~90% of customers

Run Next-Gen WAF in blocking mode3

As of March 31, 2024

As of December 31, 2019

As of March 31, 2021

As of July 31, 2023

Support plans

Fastly offers several support plans to meet your needs: standard, gold and enterprise.

Standard

Free of charge and available as soon as you sign up with Fastly.

Gold

Proactive alerts for high-impact events, expedited 24/7 incident response times, and a 100% uptime Service Level Agreement (SLA) guarantee.

Enterprise

Gives you the added benefits of emergency escalation for support cases and 24/7 responses for inquiries (not just incidents).

Ready to get started?

Get in touch.