Making Chrome QUICer Note

Making Chrome QUICer

Chrome enabled HTTP/3 by default in October 2020, which resulted in improved performance compared to HTTP/1, HTTP/2, and Google QUIC. The benefits of HTTP/3 included reduced Google search latency and fewer rebuffers for YouTube. However, the journey to optimizing performance did not end with the default enablement of HTTP/3. Recent advancements include the implementation of the HTTP/3 ORIGIN frame and Server's Preferred Address, which have been enabled by default in M131. The HTTP/3 ORIGIN frame enhances connection coalescing, while Server's Preferred Address reduces a connection's round trip time. The ORIGIN frame allows a server to indicate what domains it would like to pool onto a connection, reducing unnecessary connections and latency. Creating a new connection is expensive in terms of latency, memory, and CPU usage, making connection coalescing important for performance. The Server's Preferred Address feature allows a server to indicate a preferred address for the client to migrate to, which can reduce the round trip time and increase stability. Testing has shown that this migration is successful over 99% of the time in Chrome and reduces average RTT by 40-80%. The implementation of these features is expected to further improve the performance of HTTP/3 in the future.