Microsoft is announcing support for HTTP/2 for all customers using Azure Content Delivery Network from Verizon. This feature is enabled by default and if you are an Azure CDN customer, you will quickly start enjoying benefits of HTTP/2 protocol without the need to update any of the underlying code.
With HTTP/2, webpages will load faster thus optimize user experience. Today, all major web browsers already support HTTP/2. The HTTP/2 protocol is designed to work with HTTP and HTTPS, most of the browsers only support HTTP/2 over TLS.
Some of the key benefits of HTTP/2 include:
- Multiplexing and concurrency: Allow multiple requests sent on the same TCP connection
- HTTP/2 is binary, instead of textual
- Header compression: Reduce header size for faster transfer time
- Stream prioritization and dependencies: Prioritize resources to transfer important data first
- Server push (not supported currently): Allow server to “push” responses proactively into client caches
