What is HTTP/2?

HTTP/2 is a replacement for how HTTP is expressed “on the wire.” It is not a ground-up rewrite of the protocol; HTTP methods, status codes and semantics are the same, and it should be possible to use the same APIs as HTTP/1.x (possibly with some small additions) to represent the protocol.

The focus of the protocol is on performance; specifically, end-user perceived latency, network and server resource usage. One major goal is to allow the use of a single connection from browsers to a Web site.

The basis of the work was SPDY, but HTTP/2 has evolved to take the community’s input into account, incorporating several improvements in the process.

See our charter for more details of the scope of the work, as well as our Frequently Asked Questions.

See also HTTP/2 JP, maintained by the Japanese HTTP/2 community.

Specifications

HTTP/2 is comprised of two specifications:

• Hypertext Transfer Protocol version 2 - RFC9113
• HPACK - Header Compression for HTTP/2 - RFC7541

Implementations

We track known implementations of HTTP/2 on our wiki.