The way Chrome achieves this backward-compatibility is by using the SSL Next Protocol Negotiation (NPN) extension during SSL handshaking. When the browser is es

The way Chrome achieves this backward-compatibility is by using the SSL Next Protocol Negotiation (NPN) extension during SSL handshaking. When the browser is establishing an SSL session, it mentions to the server that it's willing to speak SPDY (as part of the ClientHello message). If the server also speaks SPDY, it can communicate that fact back to the client. If the client sees that the server supports SPDY, it proceeds to send SPDY messages over the newly established connection once the SSL handshaking is complete. Otherwise, it sends HTTP messages. The cool thing about this approach is that it doesn't add any additional network round trips.