First of all, you’re probably extremely familiar with HTTP. You may now know exactly what it means and what it does, and you are probably using it dozens of times every day. Every time you visit Google or mariushosting.com. or even WordPress.org or any other website.
Essentially, HTTP (short for HyperText Transfer Protocol) is the way a browser and a web server communicate with each other. In not too technical terms, HTTP is the language that is used by the web server and the client to communicate. HTTP was first documented officially in 1991 as version 0.9 and this was more than 25 years ago, which, in technology, is eons.
HTTP/2 is essentially an evolution of the HTTP protocol, created in 2015. Synology supports it starting with DSM version 6.0 HTTP/2 is aimed at fixing a lot of the limitations of HTTP 1.1 which was the protocol used up to 15 years before HTTP/2. In fact, one of its stated primary goals is to: “Decrease latency to improve page load speeds in web browsers”. Below, all benefits of HTTP/2 in short:
- It is faster to create a connection between the client and the server.
- The actual connection between a browser and a web server is more efficient, so implicitly faster.
- Files and resources needed by the client can be transferred simultaneously rather than sequentially.
- Files can be pushed to the web browser by the server if it thinks it’s going to need them later on – making the whole file transfer time shorter. And initial connections have been made more efficient.
Without boring the pants off you, HTTP/2 is an updated and more efficient way of delivering website components from server to browser. See the screenshot below to understand how HTTP/2 works.
You can speed up HTTP connections on your Synology NAS with DSM 7 by enabling HTTP/2.
Go to Control Panel / Network / Connectivity tab/ Check Enable HTTP/2 then click Apply. Follow the instructions in the image below.
Note: HTTP/2 for WordPress? HTTP/2 is independent of WordPress and all other web applications. Since this is something which is implemented at the web server level on Synology NAS. For WordPress, the HTTP/2 Server pushes WordPress plugins and allows site admins to suggest what resources can be “server pushed”. What this does is add the necessary support for pushing every enqueued script and style file. JS and CSS files which are using the WordPress enqueue mechanism can be pushed from the web server to the browser, making full use of the HTTP/2 optimization techniques. HTTP/2 can make your website hosted on Synology NAS faster, significantly improving your website loading time. That, by default, means that your users will have a much faster and more pleasant user experience than before.
