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#nodejs

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#quic

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Trivikram Kamat

Software Development Engineer

@trivikram

@trivikr

Tree

Weak

Rum

+

+

Tri

vik

ram

.

.

What's your name again?

My history with Node.js

  • Have been using Node.js for 4 years

  • Started contributing to Node.js core in Oct 2017

    • providing HTTP/2 support

  • Became Node.js core collaborator in March 2018

  • Organized and mentored four Code+Learn events

What are we going to cover?

  • What's HTTP/1.1, and why HTTP/2 was required

  • What's HTTP/2, and why HTTP/3 was required

  • What's HTTP/3, and 

  • Sample code!

when is it coming?

James Snell

is a Node.js TSC member, who is heading the work on implementing QUIC

Big Thanks to sponsors:

HTTP/0.9

Published: 1991

The one line protocol

GET /mypage.html
<HTML>
  A very simple HTML page
</HTML>

HTTP/1.0

Published: May 1996

Building extensibility

GET /mypage.html HTTP/1.0
User-Agent: NCSA_Mosaic/2.0 (Windows 3.1)
200 OK
Date: Tue, 15 Nov 1994 08:12:31 GMT
Server: CERN/3.0 libwww/2.17
Content-Type: text/html
<HTML> 
A page with an image
  <IMG src="/myimage.gif">
</HTML>

HTTP/1.1

Published: June 1999

The standardized protocol

GET /en-US/docs/Glossary/Simple_header HTTP/1.1
Host: developer.mozilla.org
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.9; rv:50.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/50.0
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,
Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, br
Referer: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Simple_header

Issue #1: Three roundtrips per request

Issue #2: Multiple TCP+TLS connections are created for concurrent requests

http/1.1 server

const https = require("https");
const fs = require("fs");

const options = {
  key: fs.readFileSync("ssl/localhost.key"),
  cert: fs.readFileSync("ssl/localhost.cert")
};

https
  .createServer(options, (req, res) => {
    if (req.url === "/") {
      fs.createReadStream("./files/index.html").pipe(res);
    } else if (req.url === "/style.css") {
      fs.createReadStream("./files/style.css").pipe(res);
    } else if (req.url === "/script.js") {
      fs.createReadStream("./files/script.js").pipe(res);
    } else if (req.url === "/globe.png") {
      fs.createReadStream("./files/globe.png").pipe(res);
    }
  })
  .listen(3000);

http/1.1 server

const https = require("https");
const fs = require("fs");

const options = {
  key: fs.readFileSync("ssl/localhost.key"),
  cert: fs.readFileSync("ssl/localhost.cert")
};

https
  .createServer(options, (req, res) => {
    if (req.url === "/") {
      fs.createReadStream(`./files/index.html`).pipe(res);
    } else {
      // regular expression for filename requested
      const re = /\/(\w+)*/;
      const filename = req.url.replace(re, "$1");
      fs.createReadStream(`./files/${filename}`).pipe(res);
    }
  })
  .listen(3000);

index.html

<html>
  <head>
    <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"
          href="./style.css" />
  </head>
  <body>
    <span id="greeting">Hello World!</span>
    <img id="image" src="./globe.png" />
    <script type="text/javascript" 
            src="./script.js"></script>
  </body>
</html>

style.css

#greeting {
  font-size: 180px;
}

script.js

setTimeout(() => {
  document.getElementById("greeting")
    .innerHTML = "Hello #cjs19!";
  document.getElementById("image")
    .src = "./cjs.png";
}, 1000);

globe.png

Load the webpage

examine TCP connections with netstat

examine TCP connections with netstat

Issues with HTTP/1.1

  • Three round-trips per request

  • Multiple TCP+TLS connections for concurrent requests

HTTP/2

Published: May 2015

http/2 server

const http2 = require("http2");
const fs = require("fs");

const options = {
  key: fs.readFileSync("ssl/localhost.key"),
  cert: fs.readFileSync("ssl/localhost.cert")
};

const server = http2.createSecureServer(options).listen(3000);
server.on("stream", (stream, headers) => {
  if (headers[":path"] === "/") {
    stream.respondWithFile("./files/index.html");
  } else {
    // regular expression for filename requested
    const re = /\/(\w+)*/;
    const filename = headers[":path"].replace(re, "$1");
    stream.respondWithFile(`./files/${filename}`);
  }
});

Load the webpage

examine TCP connections with netstat

examine TCP connections with netstat

Benefits of HTTP/2

  • Multiplexing and concurrency: different HTTP requests onto the same TCP connection

  • Stream dependencies: client can indicate to server which dependencies are important

  • Header compression: reduces HTTP Header size

  • Server push: server can send resources which client has not requested yet

Why do we need HTTP/3?

TCP head-of-line blocking

If a single packet is dropped, or lost in the network somewhere between two endpoints that speak HTTP/2, it means the entire TCP connection is brought to a halt while the lost packet is re-transmitted and finds its way to the destination

Chain metaphor

TCP connection

CSS packet

JS packet

HTTP/3 over QUIC

draft-23 as of Nov 2019

When setting up multiple streams over QUIC connection, they are treated independently so that if any packet goes missing for one of the streams, only that stream has to pause and wait for the missing packet to get retransmitted.

CSS stream

JS stream

QUIC is built on UDP

QUIC also reduces roundtrips

Which apps will benefit from HTTP/3?

Learn from Jasper tomorrow at 10am on how QUIC can help manage swarm of drones

HTTP/3 IETF draft

http/3 server

const quic = require("quic");
const fs = require("fs");

const options = {
  key: fs.readFileSync("ssl/localhost.key"),
  cert: fs.readFileSync("ssl/localhost.cert")
};

const server = quic.createSocket({ port: 3000 });
server.listen(options);
server.on("session", session => {
  session.on("stream", (stream, headers) => {
    if (headers[":path"] === "/") {
      stream.respondWithFile("./files/index.html");
    } else {
      // regular expression for filename requested
      const re = /\/(\w+)*/;
      const filename = headers[":path"].replace(re, "$1");
      stream.respondWithFile(`./files/${filename}`);
    }
  });
});

Load the webpage

HTTP/3 over QUIC in Node.js is in early stages of development

You can help build it!

nodejs/quic progress

project board

How can I write unit tests?

git clone git@github.com:trivikr/quic.git

cd quic

./configure --experimental-quic --coverage

make -j4 coverage

Current state of JavaScript tests

Current state of C++ tests

Example webpage on QUIC

Summary

  • In HTTP/1.1, multiple TCP+TLS connections were required for concurrent requests

  • HTTP/2 added multiplexing in which multiple HTTP requests were sent onto the same TCP connection

  • TCP head-of-line blocking: the entire TCP connection is brought to halt if a single TCP packet is lost.

  • HTTP/3 over QUIC treats each stream independently, so if any packet goes missing in a stream - only that stream is affected

Thank you for listening!

Trivikram Kamat

@trivikram

@trivikr

HTTP/3: Node.js can do QUIC

By Trivikram Kamat

HTTP/3: Node.js can do QUIC

Slides for CascadiaJS talk from November 2019 https://2019.cascadiajs.com/speakers/trivikram-kamat

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