HTTP1.1 vs HTTP2 | Difference between HTTP1.1 and HTTP2

This page compares HTTP1.1 vs HTTP2 and mentions difference between HTTP1.1 and HTTP2 protocol types.

HTTP1.1 protocol

It was published in 1997 for providing improvement over HTTP protocol. It is World Wide Web (WWW) protocol which runs on top of TCP/IP protocol stack. It uses text based commands for communication between client and web server. It offers faster web page loading compare to HTTP and reduces web traffic.

The features of HTTP/1.1 protocol are as follows.
• Single request/response at a time, Browsers use multiple connections to achieve concurrent requests and responses
• Requests and responses are text based
• Required host header
• Condition caching headers
• Digest authentication and proxy authentication
• Chunked transfer encoding
• Connection header
• Enhanced compression support


HTTP2 protocol

Difference between HTTP1.1 and HTTP2

It was published in Feb. 2015 for providing many improvements over HTTP/1.1 protocol. It uses binary data for communication between client and web server. It offers faster web page loading compare to HTTP/1.1 protocol. Figure depicts major difference between HTTP1.1 and HTTP2 protocols. • Multiplexing : Multiple requests and responses are sent at a time over single connection
• Server push : Server pushes resources to client which reduces number of round trips and improves performance to load web page faster.
• Supports header compression which reduces amount of data over connection.
• Supports prioritization of requests and responses which allows resources to be loaded faster.
• Supports binary format which is more efficient than text based format used in HTTP1.1
• Supports flow control mechanism to ensure client does not receive more data than its capacity and server does not send more than client's capacity.
• Supports HTTPS encryption protocol

Difference between HTTP1.1 and HTTP2

Following is the tabular difference between HTTP1.1 and HTTP2.


Feature HTTP1.1 HTTP2
Multiplexing Not supported Supported, Multiple requests/responses are sent over single connection.
Server Push Not supported Supported, Server pushes resources to the client which enables faster web page loading.
Header compression Not supported Supported using HPACK
Prioritization Not supported Supported, offers better user experience
Protocol data type Text Binary
Encryption Supports SSL/TLS Supports HTTPS
Flow control Not supported Supported
Reference RFCs It uses RFC 2616 It uses RFC 7540

➨Also refer advantages and disadvantages of HTTP protocol >> and HTTP2 protocol >> for more information.


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