Full HTTP/2 support is available across all Progress Kemp Application Delivery Controllers (ADCs) and can be enabled at the push of a button. Progress Kemp's HTTP/2 support greatly improves user experience on applications and websites, simplifying the performance upgrade path for site administrators.

HTTP/2 is the latest version of Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and is designed to optimize the delivery of content on everything from websites to mobile apps leading to a much better end user experience. It is supported across modern browsers including the latest versions of Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Microsoft Internet Explorer, and Edge.

HTTP/2 has huge potential. There are a number of inflexibility, inefficiency and performance challenges with HTTP/1 that are solved by HTTP/2. Several of the benefits of HTTP/2 are below:

  • Multiplexing and concurrency: Several requests can be sent in rapid succession in the same TCP connection. Responses can be received out of order – eliminating the need for multiple connections between the client and the server.
  • Stream dependencies: The client can indicate to the server which of the resources are more important than others
  • Header compression: HTTP header size is drastically reduced
  • Server push: The server can send resources that the client has not yet requested

The LoadMaster also supports HTTP/2 – the LoadMaster can convert HTTP/2 traffic to HTTP/1.1 traffic in the back-end before it hits the Real Servers. These Real Servers do not need to have SSL enabled.

The HTTP/2 functionality in the LoadMaster provides optimizations, such as request pipelining and request multiplexing to reduce the request load on back-end servers. This results in a significantly improved end user experience when using a browser with HTTP/2 support. HTTP/2 works with a number of LoadMaster features, such as content switching, content caching, advanced persistence, header injection and the Web Application Firewall (WAF).

Document Purpose

The purpose of this document is to show you how to enable HTTP/2 in the LoadMaster and provide test website content for you to test the functionality against.

Support

If you have any questions or need assistance, please contact Progress Kemp Support: LoadMaster Support and Learning Hub.