4 ms·

Twitter adds SPDY support to Netty

121 points by cgbystrom 15y ago

tlrobinson 15y ago
Cool, support seems to be picking up. Here's a list of implementations: http://dev.chromium.org/spdy http://dev.chromium.org/spdy Nginx seems to be the big missing one. I think Mongrel2 would be a good fit too.
spullara 15y ago
This is a big deal for sites that want to rival Google sites performance-wise. Especially now that it will be in Firefox 11 in addition to Chrome. It would be great if any of the popular proxy servers - like Nginx - also had support for it.
- firemanx 15y ago
  Last I heard, it was in the works for NGinx: https://twitter.com/#!/nginxorg/status/150112670966747137 https://twitter.com/#!/nginxorg/status/150112670966747137
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
- ComputerGuru 15y ago
  I believe Firefox + Chrome easily qualifies as "wide browser support." IE is really the only one left now.
  - adpowers 15y ago
    Uhh, Safari? Safari is the number one browser on one of my (non-technical) websites, primarily because of mobile traffic (iPhone and iPad).
    - ComputerGuru 15y ago
      Mobile browsers are already slow and playing catchup with the desktop web. They're hardly the place cutting edge innovation is taking place.
- chc 15y ago
  Surely you just need your webserver to support the protocol. I don't think most apps will directly speak SPDY.
  - afimrishi 15y ago
    That's true for the most part. But if you want to leverage certain SPDY features like SPDY server push, then your app must be SPDY aware. Likewise, if you want to undo normal HTTP optimizations like hostname sharding which are damaging for SPDY, your app should be SPDY aware. Check out http://dev.chromium.org/spdy/spdy-best-practices http://dev.chromium.org/spdy/spdy-best-practices for other recommendations.
- JoshTriplett 15y ago
  > Personally, I would hesitate to implement them unless they had wide browser support. When "implement them" means either "change one config option in your web server" or "install one package containing a SPDY implementation for your server", it seems worth doing just to provide a better experience for the browsers that support it so far.
  - tpatke 15y ago
    You got me there. That does seem reasonable. I guess I need to do a bit more investigation. :-)
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
- tlrobinson 15y ago
  SPDY "gracefully degrades" to HTTP, so there's not really a chicken and egg problem. If your web server makes it easy to enable SPDY, there's not a big reason not to (that I'm aware of). Technically SPDY is an application layer protocol, but you shouldn't need to change your existing HTTP application to enable it.
ww520 15y ago
That's very cool. Netty is amazing already in term of performance. This just pushes it up another rung.
bensummers 15y ago
I presume that it doesn't support SNI (for SSL vhosts) as the underlying JVM doesn't support it for servers? (I couldn't see anything in the docs, and it says it uses the JVM's SSL support underneath.) One of the Google chaps said that SPDY required SNI when it was originally announced, so I was hopeful for a while.
- ivanr 15y ago
  Server Name Indication was added in Java 7, so I would expect that Netty supports it too, assuming you're running the latest version of the Java runtime.
  - wbier 15y ago
    the missing piece is next protocol negotiation. we're working on releasing this code soon. expanded support in finagle (github.com/twitter/finagle) is also forthcoming.
  - bensummers 15y ago
    In the server as well as the client?
moonchrome 15y ago
Yey ! I just wrote a server on top of Netty and figured out how to use SPDY to boost my performance but couldn't find SPDY implementation for Netty. Thank you twitter !
benmmurphy 15y ago
i have an example of SPDY+Netty+NPN here: https://github.com/benmmurphy/netty_spdy_example https://github.com/benmmurphy/netty_spdy_example it works with chrome which is quite nice to see.

121 points by cgbystrom 15y ago

Cool, support seems to be picking up. Here's a list of implementations: http://dev.chromium.org/spdy http://dev.chromium.org/spdy Nginx seems to be the big missing one. I think Mongrel2 would be a good fit too.

spullara 15y ago

This is a big deal for sites that want to rival Google sites performance-wise. Especially now that it will be in Firefox 11 in addition to Chrome. It would be great if any of the popular proxy servers - like Nginx - also had support for it.

firemanx 15y ago
Last I heard, it was in the works for NGinx: https://twitter.com/#!/nginxorg/status/150112670966747137 https://twitter.com/#!/nginxorg/status/150112670966747137

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

ComputerGuru 15y ago
I believe Firefox + Chrome easily qualifies as "wide browser support." IE is really the only one left now.
- adpowers 15y ago
  Uhh, Safari? Safari is the number one browser on one of my (non-technical) websites, primarily because of mobile traffic (iPhone and iPad).
  - ComputerGuru 15y ago
    Mobile browsers are already slow and playing catchup with the desktop web. They're hardly the place cutting edge innovation is taking place.
chc 15y ago
Surely you just need your webserver to support the protocol. I don't think most apps will directly speak SPDY.
- afimrishi 15y ago
  That's true for the most part. But if you want to leverage certain SPDY features like SPDY server push, then your app must be SPDY aware. Likewise, if you want to undo normal HTTP optimizations like hostname sharding which are damaging for SPDY, your app should be SPDY aware. Check out http://dev.chromium.org/spdy/spdy-best-practices http://dev.chromium.org/spdy/spdy-best-practices for other recommendations.
JoshTriplett 15y ago
> Personally, I would hesitate to implement them unless they had wide browser support. When "implement them" means either "change one config option in your web server" or "install one package containing a SPDY implementation for your server", it seems worth doing just to provide a better experience for the browsers that support it so far.
- tpatke 15y ago
  You got me there. That does seem reasonable. I guess I need to do a bit more investigation. :-)
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
tlrobinson 15y ago
SPDY "gracefully degrades" to HTTP, so there's not really a chicken and egg problem. If your web server makes it easy to enable SPDY, there's not a big reason not to (that I'm aware of). Technically SPDY is an application layer protocol, but you shouldn't need to change your existing HTTP application to enable it.

ww520 15y ago

That's very cool. Netty is amazing already in term of performance. This just pushes it up another rung.

bensummers 15y ago

I presume that it doesn't support SNI (for SSL vhosts) as the underlying JVM doesn't support it for servers? (I couldn't see anything in the docs, and it says it uses the JVM's SSL support underneath.) One of the Google chaps said that SPDY required SNI when it was originally announced, so I was hopeful for a while.

ivanr 15y ago
Server Name Indication was added in Java 7, so I would expect that Netty supports it too, assuming you're running the latest version of the Java runtime.
- wbier 15y ago
  the missing piece is next protocol negotiation. we're working on releasing this code soon. expanded support in finagle (github.com/twitter/finagle) is also forthcoming.
- bensummers 15y ago
  In the server as well as the client?

moonchrome 15y ago

Yey ! I just wrote a server on top of Netty and figured out how to use SPDY to boost my performance but couldn't find SPDY implementation for Netty. Thank you twitter !

benmmurphy 15y ago

i have an example of SPDY+Netty+NPN here: https://github.com/benmmurphy/netty_spdy_example https://github.com/benmmurphy/netty_spdy_example it works with chrome which is quite nice to see.