One of the most prominent changes from SPDY to HTTP/2 is the introduction of dependency-based stream prioritization.
SPDY only had weight-based prioritization. In weight-based prioritization, every stream (e.g. file being served) is given a weight, and the value is used by the server to proportionally distribute the bandwidth between the streams.
HTTP/2 introduced a new scheme: dependency-based prioritization in addition to the weight-based approach. By using the added prioritization method, web browsers can advise HTTP/2 servers to send the streams that are depended by other streams before sending the other streams. For example, by using dependency-based prioritization web browsers can request the server to send CSS or JavaScript files before sending HTML or image files.
As of this writing, out of the two popular web browsers that implement HTTP/2, only Firefox uses dependency-based prioritization.
The case of Mozilla Firefox
The prioritization strategy of Firefox is as follows1:
- send CSS and JavaScript files in
<HEAD>before HTML and/or image files by using dependency-based prioritization - HTML streams are given 2.5x bandwidth above image streams (by using weight-based prioritization)
- script files within
<BODY>are in total given about the half bandwidths of the other files2
Below is the network time chart generated by Firefox 37.0.1 when accessing a sample web page3 (given 100ms network latency) containing a number of CSS, script files, and images. H2O version 1.2.0 was used as the HTTP/2 server for running the benchmark.
By looking at the chart, you can see that many CSS, script files and images are requested in parallel at some time around 320ms, but that the download of files that block rendering (e.g. CSS and script files) complete before any of the images (even the smallest ones) become available. This is due to the fact, as I explained earlier, that Firefox notifies the HTTP/2 server that HTML and image files depend on the CSS and the script files to become rendered; therefore the server is sending the files being depended before sending the dependents. And thanks to the prioritization, all the files that are required to do the initial rendering arrives at the web browser (a.k.a. first-paint time) at around 1.0 seconds from start.
The case of Google Chrome
On the other hand Chrome's prioritization logic only uses the weight-based prioritization; the logic remains mostly same with that used in SPDY. Chrome assigns a predefined weight to each of the stream based on their types.
| Type | Weight |
|---|---|
| HTML | 256 |
| CSS | 220 |
| script | 183 |
| image | 110 |
And here is the timing chart taken using Chrome (version 44.0.2371.0 canary) when accessing the same web page.
Unlike Firefox, CSS and script files are not arriving before the image files. If you look carefully, you will find a vague relationship between the size and the arrive time of the contents independent to their types. This is because each of the files are interleaved into a single TCP stream based on their weights, and because of the fact that the weight between the files do not differ much. Therefore the initial-paint time is as late as 1.5 seconds5.
Conclusion
As shown, dependency-based prioritization introduced in HTTP/2 brings non-negligible benefit in terms of web-site performance. In case of the benchmark, Firefox using dependency-based prioritization was 1.5x faster than Google Chrome only using weight-based prioritization when comparing the first-print timings.
My understanding is that the developers of Chrome is aware of this issue, so hopefully it will be fixed soon. I also hope that other web browser vendors will utilize dependency-based prioritization. As shown, it is clearly the way to go!
PS. And it should also be worth noting that HTTP/2 servers should implement the prioritization logics correctly. In case of H2O, the server both of the prioritization logics are fully implemented using a per-frame weight-based round robin with the frame size of 16Kbytes at maximum.
note 1: ref: HTTP/2 Dependency Prioritization in Firefox 37, Http2Stream.cpp line 1088 of Firefox
note 2: ref: nsScriptLodare.cpp line 306; I am not sure if this is the intended behavior, IMO script tags in BODY should given a priority equiv. to HTML or image files, and it might be the case that the condition of the if statement should be reversed.
note 3: http2rulez.com was used for testing the load speed, with the
note 4: ref: MapPriorityToWeight function of Chrome
note 5: the network chart of Chrome includes a 0.2 second block before initianting the TCP connection, which has been subtracted from the numbers written in this blog text.
note 2: ref: nsScriptLodare.cpp line 306; I am not sure if this is the intended behavior, IMO script tags in BODY should given a priority equiv. to HTML or image files, and it might be the case that the condition of the if statement should be reversed.
note 3: http2rulez.com was used for testing the load speed, with the
<script> tags at the end of the document moved into <HEAD>note 4: ref: MapPriorityToWeight function of Chrome
note 5: the network chart of Chrome includes a 0.2 second block before initianting the TCP connection, which has been subtracted from the numbers written in this blog text.
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