Microsoft Wants A Faster Web With HTTP Speed+Mobility

Have you been noticing a pattern lately? ZTE is working on faster fibre optics, and Huawei boasted about their ludicrous speeds using new wireless technology. Microsoft also wants to speed the internet up, approaching the problem from a standards angle. The Internet Engineering Task Force is meeting next week to decide on a HTTP 2.0 solution, and Microsoft want to submit their own proposal, HTTP Speed+Mobility.

One of the candidates for HTTP 2.0 was Google's SPDY protocol. It's similar to the existing HTTP protocol, but Google claim that it's 50% faster. Several browsers incorporate the technology right now, including Chrome and Firefox, while Google and Twitter try and deliver pages using SPDY if it's possible.

The IETF are considering turning SPDY into a standard, but Microsoft want to pitch HTTP Speed+Mobility. It too boasts speed increases like SPDY, but also includes elements from HTML5's WebSocket API. Microsoft's focus seems to be on mobile devices and applications, not just desktop web browsers.

Mike Belshe, co-creator of SPDY, welcomed Microsoft's move and said via Google+ that he's looking forward to seeing "real-world performance metrics and open source implementations so that we can all evaluate them." He also rejected claims that SPDY isn't built for mobile, saying that developers are generally happy to use SPDY for mobile apps.

[via Web Monkey]