NGINX with SPDY v2, v3, and v3.1?

Question

I'm currently running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS with NGINX 1.5.10 and SPDY v3.1. While implementing SPDY, I've seen web servers that are supporting multiple versions of the SPDY protocol. For an example you can see:

• http://spdycheck.org/#google.com
• http://spdycheck.org/#facebook.com

Obviously these are some of the biggest sites around, but I've looked for guidelines or documentation on how to support the different versions of the protocol, but there are no clear answers.

I'm not sure whether this is possible but any help or guidance as to how to achieve this would be much appreciated!

Thanks! Alex

Answer 1

It depends on which version of nginx you installed. The current version will install the current version of SPDY. SPDY 3.1 is in a module built for nginx.

You shouldn't have to do anything different to your code to support the different versions since this is a transport mechanism for the server.

Answer 2

I've looked for guidelines or documentation on how to support the different versions of the protocol, but there are no clear answers.

The answer is simple: don't, just use the latest version. Both Chrome and Firefox are aggressive about deprecating support for older versions -- e.g. expect spdy/v2 support to be removed in Q2/Q3 of 2014; IE should keep up as well.

If you want to track progress and watch out for announcements around new drafts or plans to deprecate old versions, sign up for spdy-dev mailing list.