HTTP/2 (HTTP/2.0) is the major upgrade over older version HTTP/1.1 protocol.HTTP/1 was released in 1997 and after a long time the HTTP/2 is released in 2015. HTTP/2 protocol is based on SPDY (generally known as speedy). Some of the key improvements of HTTP/2 are:
- Server push: Server will pro-actively sent components to clients, So clients doesn’t need to wait for sending requests to server.
- Multiplexing: Reducing number of active connection by bundling multiple HTTP requests from client and sent to server.
- Encryption: efficiently use to encryption with TLS protocol in HTTP/2 over HTTP/1.1.
- HTTP header compression: Compressed headers will reduce the overhead of additional requests to web server.
This article will help you to enable HTTP/2.0 in Apache web server on CentOS / Red Hat/ Debian and Ubuntu systems.
Install or Update Apache
HTTP/2 protocol supported over Apache version >=2.4.17. So make sure that your Apache version supporting HTTP/2 protocol. If you have not installed Apache or using older version upgrade it first. Use the following commands to add PPA for installing latest Apache2 version on your Ubuntu system.
$ sudo apt-get install python-software-properties $ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/apache2 $ sudo apt-get update $ sudo apt-get install apache2
Verify Apache Version
After successful installation of Apache2 web server on your system, make sure you have Apache >=2.4.17, Earlier version does not supports HTTP/2 protocol.
$ apache2 -v Server version: Apache/2.4.17 (Ubuntu) Server built: 2015-11-05T00:00:00
Enable HTTP/2 in Apache
HTTP/2 protocol requires SSL/TLS virtual hosts. You can’t use HTTP/2 protocol without SSL/TLS enabled websites. Now edit your website VirtualHost and add
$ sudo a2enmod http2 $ sudo service apache2 restart
Verify HTTP/2
Now configure a VirtualHost with SSL for your domain and use following online tool for testing HTTP/2 support on your website.
https://tools.keycdn.com/http2-test
Thanks for the info….