HTTP/3 Hosting Done Right.

What is HTTP/3 hosting?

HTTP/3, formerly known as HTTP over QUIC and successor to HTTP/2, is a next-generation web technology designed to boost your website performance.

HostM is among the first providers to support HTTP/3 hosting, allowing all of your websites to benefit from this right away.

How to enable and benefit from HTTP/3 hosting

As the hosting account holder and website operator, there is nothing that needs to be done to enable HTTP/3 hosting. It is automatically enabled as long as the conditions below are met:

1. The web server must support HTTP/3.

   HostM takes care of this for you. All HostM servers already support HTTP/3 via our LiteSpeed hosting setup.

2. The website must have a valid and trusted SSL certificate installed.

   Our system automatically installs free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates on domains hosted on your HostM hosting account.

3. The visitors’ web browsers must support HTTP/3.

   Most modern web browsers already support HTTP/3, including the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, and Edge. Safari and Opera already offer partial support.

   Visitors with older browsers can still access your sites without issues; their connections automatically fall back to HTTP/2 or HTTP/1.1.

4. The firewalls, if any, on the visitors’ devices and local networks must allow traffic through UDP port 443.

   This is often already the case, so most visitors are able to enjoy HTTP/3 while browsing and interacting with your sites.

   The increasing usage of HTTP/3 over time will result in UDP port 443 being opened on even more firewalls.

   Visitors who continue to have firewalls blocking the port can still enjoy HTTP/2 in modern web browsers.

What are the benefits of HTTP/3 over HTTP/2?

Under the hood, HTTP/3 introduces a number of technical enhancements:

• Encryption By Default

  HTTP/3 only works if all aspects of the transmissions, including handshakes, are encrypted. This is different from HTTP/2, which can optionally be utilized over unencrypted channels.

• Seamless Connection Migrations

  HTTP/3 uses QUIC which is more robust when handling the switching of connections between WiFi, Ethernet and mobile connections. This results in less transmission disruptions for users.

• Avoids Head-of-Line Blocking

  With HTTP/3, dropped packets do not cause all streams on the connection to be paused for retransmission. HTTP/3 is stream-aware, so only the stream affected by the retransmission is paused, while other streams continue transmitting data.

• Faster Initialization of Connections

  With HTTP/3 using QUIC, TLS version negotiation is performed concurrently with connection handshakes, resulting in the faster establishment of connections.

Get started today with HTTP/3 hosting!

Should you have any questions about our HTTP/3 hosting feature, feel free to contact us. If you’re ready to get started, click here to open your account today!