QuicTransport

QuicTransport is an API that allows Web applications to connect directly to remote servers using QUIC. It is a part of the WebTransport framework; Http3Transport and FallbackTransport are not covered by this enhancement.

Currently, Web application developers have two APIs for bidirectional communications with a remote server: WebSockets and RTCDataChannel. WebSockets are TCP-based, thus having all of the drawbacks of TCP that make it a poor fit for latency sensitive applications (head of line blocking, lack of support for unreliable data transport). RTCDataChannel is based on SCTP, which does not have these drawbacks; however, it is designed to be used in a peer-to-peer context, which caused its use in client-server settings to be fairly low. QuicTransport provides a client-server API that supports bidirectional transfer of both unreliable and reliable data, using UDP-like datagrams and cancellable streams.

Documentation

• https://web.dev/quictransport/
• https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UgviRBnZkMUq4OKcsAJvIQFX6UCXeCbOtX_wMgwD_es/edit

Specification

Editor's draft

Status in Chromium

Blink components: Blink>Network>WebTransport

Origin trial (tracking bug) in:

• Chrome for desktop release 84
• Chrome for Android release 84
• Android WebView release 84

Consensus & Standardization

• Firefox: No signal
• Edge: Positive
• Safari: No signal
• Web Developers: Positive

Owners

• yhirano@chromium.org
• vasilvv@chromium.org

Last updated on 2020-09-11