The new HTTP/2 standard is finally here. Approved earlier this year, HTTP/2 adds a new binary framing layer that will help make applications faster, simpler, and more robust. This chapter from the new release of High Performance Browser Networking provides a brief look at this updated protocol and explains how it will reduce latency, minimize protocol overhead, and add support for request prioritization and server push.

In this excerpt, author Ilya Grigorik takes you through HTTP/2's design and technical goals, and explains how Google's SPDY played a critical role in the protocol's development. You'll also learn what's required for upgrading a multitude of servers and clients to HTTP/2.

Ilya Grigorik is a developer advocate and web performance engineer at Google. He spends his days and nights working on making the web faster and building and driving adoption of performance best practices.

Prior to focusing on web performance Ilya was the founder and CTO of PostRank, a social analytics company which was acquired by Google and became the core of social analytics reporting within Google Analytics. Whenever not thinking web performance, or analytics, Ilya can be found contributing to open-source projects, reading, or building fun projects like VimGolf, GitHub Archive and others.