Instart Logic, HTTP/2 and You

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INSTART LOGIC, HTTP/2 AND YOU
BY DAWN PARZYCH
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The previous blog posts in the HTTP/2 series
covered the background on HTTP/2,
the functionality and how it differs from
HTTP/1.1 in this post we will look at how these
changes will impact Instart Logic customers today
and in the future. From its inception Instart
Logic took a different stance to traditional
Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) and performance
optimization. Instead of doing traditional front
end optimization which can be time consuming and
has the potential to break applications, we
focused on what optimizations could be achieved
with the use of machine based learning, leading
to technologies such as SmartSequence and
SmartVision which powers our HTML
Streaming, JavaScript Streaming and SmartVision
Image Transcoding features. This is great news as
many of the front end optimizations that
companies implemented may actually hurt
performance in an HTTP/2 world while our
optimizations will continue to provide
performance improvements for web
applications. Many of the optimizations provided
via HTTP/2 are network level optimizations which
pair nicely with our application level
optimizations. Take for example our SmartVision
Image Transcoding service to reduce the size of
images delivered over the wire. Header
compression in HTTP/2 will work in parallel with
image transcoding to reduce the size of data to
be transferred with a given image even
further. On the network side, the middle mile of
our network uses a custom built transport
mechanism, Interproxy Transport Protocol (IPTP).
IPTP was built to eliminate the limitations of
HTTP and speed up content delivery on the Instart
Logic network. The benefits of IPTP is it doesn't
matter whether the first or last mile is using
HTTP, SPDY or HTTP/2 our network can handle it
and no changes are needed to the middle mile to
get the most efficient application delivery. The
diagram below shows what communication looks like
under various scenarios.
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Today we are working towards enabling our network
to handle HTTP/2 client connections. In the
future as HTTP/2 has greater adoption,
organizations will want to start experimenting
with some of the more advanced features of HTTP/2
like priorities, dependencies and push. The work
we have done with machine based learning puts us
in a position to help customers automate this
process by identifying the dependencies, setting
priorities and pushing the right content to users
at the right time. Our initial implementation
will be similar to our SPDY implementation with
communication between the client and Instart
Logic servers occurring over HTTP/2 and
communication between the customer origin servers
and Instart Logic taking place over HTTP/1.1. We
were one of the first in the industry to support
SPDY, and have real-life deployment experience.
We also uncovered some gotchas which will make it
easier for customers to transition to SPDY and
HTTP/2. We are working on finalizing support for
HTTP/2 on our service.
Visit our Blog to learn more