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17. About HTTP/2 Push

This document contains technical details about our HTTP/2 implementation, for a hands-on introduction on how to enable HTTP/2 push in sc_pack deployments, check our guide on HTTP/2 push.

17.1. Priorities on pushed streams

HTTP/2 uses independent streams to exchange resources between the browser and the server. Those assets however share the same channel, and their relative priority can heavily influence how quickly a web-page is rendered.

With ShimmerCat, streams are pushed by default with conventional priorities: CSS high, JS a little less high, and so on. The main response HTML is given the highest priority and its DATA frames will start traveling the HTTP/2 connection as soon as they are available.

17.2. How is it configured: push-lists and calm maps

HTTP/2 Push is optimized by the accelerator service, and the output of the accelerator service is what we call “push lists”: a list of resources to push. These are YAML files with the relative locations of the assets to push for a given view.

They live in a file with .push-list extension that looks like this one:

hints:
- /my-statics-location/my-js/cool.js
- /my-statics-location/my-css/coolest.css?ver=1.2
# ... 
schema: push-list-v1

In the example above, ShimmerCat will push the files with URL paths /my-statics-location/my-js/cool.js and /my-statics-location/my-css/coolest.css, though for the later it will also use the provided query string.

The .push-list files are not limited to pushed assets, but can also contain so called calm maps.

17.3. Works for all browsers

ShimmerCat QS HTTP/2 Push implementation is guided by the principle “it should work today”. Since browser’s HTTP/2 Push implementations are slightly different, ShimmerCat comes with a (so far very small) database of adaptations for HTTP/2 Push, even disabling it for those cases where the technique is of no use.

The adaptations used as of QS 2378 are as follow:

  • Modern Safari versions, in Mac and iOS: disable HTTP/2 Push, since despite our extensive years of testing, we have never seen Safari use any pushed assets, although we have seen it crash plenty of times when deploying HTTP/2 Push, always using the same cryptic error message that Safari uses for all network and miscellaneous errors.

  • Microsoft Edge: limit the number of concurrently pushed streams to 8.

  • Firefox in Android: limit the number of concurrently pushed streams to 16.

Browsers are identified using fingerprints for their TLS and HTTP/2 stacks, so changing the “User-Agent” in the HTTP request has no effect on the decision about enabling HTTP/2 push that ShimmerCat QS takes.