CODEWITHSUNDEEP
springtomcathttpshttp2
theNextBigThing
theNextBigThing

Reputation: 131

Performance Issue with Http2 vs Http1.1

I have upgraded to HTTP2 from http1.1 for a tomcat9 application. After this upgrade, I can see that the performance of the rest APIs is slow. I ran a load test for 1000 samples and as a result, HTTP1.1 has better throughput and average response time however I was expecting it to be for HTTP2.

is there any configuration that has to be done or am I missing something?

PS: The response Content-type is application/json type.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 2031

Answers (1)

Barry Pollard
Barry Pollard

Reputation: 46040

You are comparing HTTP/1.1 without HTTPS with HTTP/2 with HTTPS. That’s not a true comparison of the protocols alone as HTTPS has significant overheads - particularly for just one connection.

Yes it’s true that HTTP/2 normally requires HTTPS as no browser supports HTTP/2 without HTTPS but then again browsers are increasingly warming against unsecured HTTP-only connections and limiting features like HTTP/2, Brotli, Service Workers, Geo... etc. to HTTPS anyway.

HTTP/2 over HTTPS can beat HTTP/1.1 over HTTP in certain circumstances but in general that’s a heck of a back foot to start on.

Additionally when making only one request per connection (like you are in jMeter using threads) the expense of HTTPS will be a large percentage of the connection due to the HTTPS handshake that needs to happen to set up the connection. Future requests on the same connection won’t have the same expense as in general the encryption/decryption part is relatively fast on modern hardware and so doesn’t create a noticeable delay - but the initial setup part definitely does.

Finally HTTP/2 is generally faster than HTTP/1.1 over slower, high latency connections due in large part to multiplexing. If testing over the same network, as I suspect you might be doing, where there are basically no network delays, then the benefit of HTTP/2 over HTTP/1.1 may not be apparent.

Upvotes: 3

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