Summary of HTTP Evolution

The video discusses the evolution of HTTP, the backbone of the web, from its early versions to the latest one. It highlights how HTTP has transformed from a simple protocol for hypertext documents to one supporting rich media and APIs, culminating in the introduction of HTTP/3 for improved performance on modern networks.

Key Points:

• HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) enables communication between browsers and web servers.
• Evolution from HTTP/0.9 (simple text-only support) to HTTP/1.0 (introduction of headers and status codes).
• HTTP/1.1 introduced persistent connections and pipelining to reduce latency and improve efficiency.
• Chunked transfer encoding and better caching mechanisms were implemented in HTTP/1.1.
• Despite its advantages, HTTP/1.1 faced limitations like head-of-line blocking, leading to workarounds like domain sharding.
• HTTP/2 added a binary framing layer, multiplexing, stream prioritization, and header compression to improve performance.
• HTTP/3 is based on QUIC (UDP-based) protocol, which reduces latency and handles packet loss with better efficiency.
• HTTP/3 also supports seamless connection changes, beneficial for mobile users.
• As of 2023, HTTP/1.1 is still widely used, while HTTP/2 handles over 60% of web traffic; HTTP/3 is gaining traction.