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Ask HN: Why Allow Http1 Traffic?

3 points by shanebellone ↗ HN
HTTP1 is almost entirely bot traffic. Some of these bots are good, most are not.

Why hasn't everyone switched HTTP1 to an "authorized traffic" model?

5 comments

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mattl
Which browsers don't support HTTP2?
shanebellone
I could not find one. I found an older statistic that stated 97% of browsers support HTTP2. Those that do not might be older browsers, though, the article did not seem to specify.

I've monitored my HTTP1 traffic and its split between declared bots and malicious bots.

mattl
It does seem like some older browsers don't... but then I'm curious about spiders and email image proxies and the like. I'd be very curious to see what breaks if you just completely stop all HTTP 1.0/1.1 traffic.
shanebellone
I'll be shutting down HTTP1 and implementing a Googlebot and Bingbot IP-based bypass this week. From what I can tell, everything should work fine.

I plan on conducting a field experiment to determine if it's a net-positive or net-negative activity. My hypothesis is that HTTP1 is largely a risk with no benefit when coupled a bypass for search engines. I feel uncomfortable making claims until I can prove its the better move.