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HTTP/2 support in Azure Front Door

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Currently, HTTP/2 support is enabled for all Azure Front Door configurations, requiring no extra actions.

HTTP/2 is a significant update to HTTP/1.1, offering faster web performance by reducing response times. It retains the familiar HTTP methods, status codes, and semantics of HTTP/1.1 to enhance user experience. Although HTTP/2 works with both HTTP and HTTPS, many web browsers only support HTTP/2 over Transport Layer Security (TLS).

Note

HTTP/2 protocol support is available only for requests from clients to Front Door. Communication from Front Door to back ends in the back-end pool uses HTTP/1.1.

Benefits of HTTP/2

HTTP/2 offers several benefits:

  • Multiplexing and concurrency: Unlike HTTP/1.1, which requires multiple TCP connections for multiple resource requests, HTTP/2 allows multiple resources to be requested over a single TCP connection, reducing performance costs.

  • Header compression: Compressing HTTP headers for served resources reduces the amount of data sent over the network.

  • Stream dependencies: Clients can indicate resource priorities to the server, optimizing resource loading.

Browser Support for HTTP/2

All major browsers support HTTP/2 in their current versions. Browsers that don't support HTTP/2 automatically revert to HTTP/1.1.

Browser Minimum Version
Microsoft Edge 12
Google Chrome 43
Mozilla Firefox 38
Opera 32
Safari 9

Next Steps

To learn more about HTTP/2, visit the following resources: