http2 speed improvement

[♥John W]

I've been reading about http2 so I engaged it on my server this afternoon.  Pretty easy to do using WHM, but you have to be the server admin to do it.  The main reason I was interested is for speed improvements.  On my desktop browser, it's not as easy to tell, but on phones, it's much faster.  You have to be using a php version of 7.0 or higher and you have to have higher level ciphers like TLS 1.2.  However, it went better than I expected.  From what I've read http2 is the future, so it's all going there.  If you are using the Maxcdn or google apis for js or css, they are already serving it with http2.  All browsers support it except Opera mini. 

[♥JcMagpie]

You can you chrome developer tools /network to see which bits of your site are making use of h2

 

[♥John W]

Yes, Firefox developer tools will do it too.  I'm http2 all the way, but Chrome kept the cached images from before in http1.1.  Once I cleared it, then it's all http2. 

I didn't remember http2 being discussed here.  Cpanel/Whm makes it really easy using EA4 (Easy Apache 4).

[♥JcMagpie]

This is a good place to start if you have any questions about http2

https://http2.github.io/faq/

[♥JcMagpie]

A http/2 is faster than http but it is not as fast as it could be! Why? Well it needed to maintain backward comparability with http/1.1

which limited what could be done. We will probably see the full speed improvement when http/3 is released with no backward

compatibility restrictions.

You can read more about the limitations of http/2 in this article,

https://www.upwork.com/hiring/development/the-http2-protocol-its-pros-cons-and-how-to-start-using-it/

[♥John W]

It's funny, because I went ot all the sites you've listed earlier this week.  Been thinking about switching but I thought it would be more complicated.  WHM makes it super easy.  I would imagine we'll see more hosts in time switching to it.

[♥JcMagpie]

😊 just thought it would be helpful to others to read full article. I did not know I was on http/2 until some one asked an i checked! I also found a few days ago that some of my images are .webp 😂 looks like some of the suppliers have been updating the stuff.

[♥John W]

I agree they are helpful and I like https://http2.github.io/faq/  probably the most.  I read that only 33% ish of the top 10,000 sites are http2, but it's the future. 

On your .webp images, you didn't do anything for that change?  So, you think it was done by your host at the server level?

[♥JcMagpie]

We do a lot of images imbeded in text which our manufacturers supply the copywrite for, we just use it as it's provided. When another OP raised the issue of .webp a few days ago I did a check and found we had quite a few in use already. It looks like we have fallback .png's still for those that can not use the webp.

I don't get involved in content of the sites much these days so did not know we had started using them, trying to slowly cut back my hours to full retirement 😊 .