What We Know About HTTP/3 and Its Implementation: A Literature Review

HTTP is the backbone of modern web communication. With the rapid growth of web architecture and web communication, it has led to the need for a development of new versions of the HTTP protocol to address performance, security, and communication issues that currently exist. HTTP/3 is a new protocol proposed in 2022 and recently accepted. This paper aims to examine its integration with the QUIC protocol, a UDP-based alternative to traditional TCP-based HTTP versions. HTTP/3 addresses several limitations of previous versions, such as head-of-line blocking, by using QUIC and UDP for traffic communication. This helps HTTP/3 to provide a more responsive and fault-tolerant connection. Despite its benefits, HTTP/3 faces several challenges, including application support for UDP traffic and a potential susceptibility to Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. Often in literature however, HTTP/3 and QUIC are conflated as the same thing due to their novel nature. Through a systematic literature review, this study seeks to answer three key research questions. First, how does HTTP/3 integrate the QUIC protocol, and what are the key differences between HTTP/3 and traditional TCP-based HTTP versions? Second, which specific features and enhancements in HTTP/3 address the performance and security issues found in previous HTTP versions? The final question is, "How has HTTP/3 been deployed to solve challenges in cloud, IoT, and web environments and what opportunities does it afford? By addressing these questions, this paper will provide a clearer understanding of HTTP/3's architecture, its relationship with QUIC, and its implications for web, IoT, and cloud system architecture.