Amazon CloudFront is a content delivery network (CDN) service, a network of interconnected servers that is geographically closer to the users and reaches their computers much faster. Amazon CloudFront reduces latency by delivering data through 410+ globally dispersed Points of Presence (PoPs) with automated network mapping and intelligent routing.
We are adding HTTP version 3.0 (HTTP/3) support for Amazon CloudFront. HTTP/3 uses QUIC, a user datagram protocol-based, stream-multiplexed, and secure transport protocol that combines and improves upon the capabilities of existing transmission control protocol (TCP), TLS, and HTTP/2. Now, you can enable HTTP/3 for end user connections in all new and existing CloudFront distributions on all edge locations worldwide, and there is no additional charge for using this feature.
Benefits of HTTP/3 on CloudFront
Our customers always want to provide faster, more responsive and secure experience on the web for end users. HTTP/3 provides benefits to all CloudFront customers in the form of faster connection times, stream multiplexing, client-side connection migration, and fewer round trips in the handshake process to reduce error rates.
QUIC connections over UDP support connection reuse with a connection ID independent from IP address/port tuples so users have no interruption or impact. Customers operating in countries with low network connectivity will see improved performance from their applications.
CloudFront’s HTTP/3 support provides enhanced security built on top of s2n-quic, an open-source Rust implementation of the QUIC protocol added to our set of AWS encryption open-source libraries, both with a strong emphasis on efficiency and performance.
If you enable HTTP/3 in CloudFront distributions, the users can make HTTP/3 viewer request to CloudFront edge locations. Past the edge location, we have highly reliable networks within AWS Cloud and CloudFront will continue to use HTTP/1.1 for origin fetches. So, you don’t need to make any server-side changes in order to make your content accessible via HTTP/3.
How to Enable HTTP/3
To enable HTTP/3 connection, you can edit the distribution configuration through the CloudFront console. You can select HTTP/3 in Supported HTTP versions on an existing distribution or create a new distribution without any changes to origin.
After deploying your distribution, you can connect with a browser that supports HTTP/3, such as the latest version of Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Microsoft Edge, and Apple Safari after turning it on manually. Can i use HTTP/3 Support page.
You can test HTTP/3 support to Curl from the command line:
$ curl --http3 -i https://t40mfgerxxxxx.cloudfront.net/test.html
Additionally, HTTP/3 provides enhanced security as it uses QUIC which encrypts the TLS handshake packets by default. CloudFront customers that have enabled HTTP/3 on their distributions have seen up to 10% improvement in time to first byte, and up to 15% improvement in page load times. Customers have also observed reliability improvements as handshake failures reduced when they enabled HTTP/3 on their distributions.
Supported HTTP versions
Choose the HTTP versions that you want your distribution to support when viewers communicate with CloudFront.
For viewers and CloudFront to use HTTP/2, viewers must support TLSv1.2 or later, and Server Name Indication (SNI).
For viewers and CloudFront to use HTTP/3, viewers must support TLSv1.3 and Server Name Indication (SNI). CloudFront supports HTTP/3 connection migration to allow the viewer to switch networks without losing connection.
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