Engineers Rebuild HTTP as a Faster Web Foundation

Cnet: A group of engineers meeting in Paris agree that the Web should be faster, but they haven’t yet agreed on how to accomplish their goal. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) heard presentations on recommendations for HTTP 2.0 from Microsoft, Google and others. Google has already begun using a technology known as SPDY, and Microsoft is backing HTTP Speed+Mobility.

The two proposals are very similar. “There’s a lot of overlap,” said Greenbytes consultant and meeting attendee Julian Reschke. “There’s a lot of agreement about what needs to be fixed.” However, the two companies disagree about encryption: Google thinks it should be required, while Microsoft favors optional encryption.