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HTTP/3 Protocol |
HTTP/3 is the third major version of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). Unlike its predecessors which rely on TCP, HTTP/3 is based on QUIC (Quick UDP Internet Connections) protocol. It brings several benefits that collectively result in reduced latency and improved performance:
- enabling seamless transition between different network connections, such as switching from Wi-Fi to mobile data.
- eliminating head-of-line blocking, so that a lost packet does not block all streams.
- negotiating TLS versions at the same time as the TLS handshakes, allowing for faster connections.
- providing encryption by default, ensuring that all data transmitted over an HTTP/3 connection is protected and confidential.
- providing zero round-trip time (0-RTT) when communicating with servers that clients already established connections to.
APISIX currently supports HTTP/3 connections between downstream clients and APISIX. HTTP/3 connections with upstream services are not yet supported, and contributions are welcomed.
:::caution
This feature is currently experimental and not recommended for production use.
:::
This document will show you how to configure APISIX to enable HTTP/3 connections between client and APISIX and document a few known issues.
Enable HTTP/3 on port 9443
(or a different port) by adding the following configurations to APISIX's config.yaml
configuration file:
apisix:
ssl:
listen:
- port: 9443
enable_http3: true
ssl_protocols: TLSv1.3
:::info
If you are deploying APISIX using Docker, make sure to allow UDP in the HTTP3 port, such as -p 9443:9443/udp
.
:::
Then reload APISIX for configuration changes to take effect:
apisix reload
HTTP/3 requires TLS. You can leverage the purchased certificates or self-generate them, whichever applicable.
To self-generate, first generate the certificate authority (CA) key and certificate:
openssl genrsa -out ca.key 2048 && \
openssl req -new -sha256 -key ca.key -out ca.csr -subj "/CN=ROOTCA" && \
openssl x509 -req -days 36500 -sha256 -extensions v3_ca -signkey ca.key -in ca.csr -out ca.crt
Next, generate the key and certificate with a common name for APISIX, and sign with the CA certificate:
openssl genrsa -out server.key 2048 && \
openssl req -new -sha256 -key server.key -out server.csr -subj "/CN=test.com" && \
openssl x509 -req -days 36500 -sha256 -extensions v3_req \
-CA ca.crt -CAkey ca.key -CAserial ca.srl -CAcreateserial \
-in server.csr -out server.crt
Optionally load the content stored in server.crt
and server.key
into shell variables:
server_cert=$(cat server.crt)
server_key=$(cat server.key)
Create an SSL certificate object to save the server certificate and its key:
curl -i "http://127.0.0.1:9180/apisix/admin/ssls" -X PUT -d '
{
"id": "quickstart-tls-client-ssl",
"sni": "test.com",
"cert": "'"${server_cert}"'",
"key": "'"${server_key}"'"
}'
Create a sample route to httpbin.org
:
curl "http://127.0.0.1:9180/apisix/admin/routes" -X PUT -d '
{
"id":"httpbin-route",
"uri":"/get",
"upstream": {
"type":"roundrobin",
"nodes": {
"httpbin.org:80": 1
}
}
}'
Install static-curl or any other curl executable that has HTTP/3 support.
Send a request to the route:
curl -kv --http3-only \
-H "Host: test.com" \
--resolve "test.com:9443:127.0.0.1" "https://test.com:9443/get"
You should receive an HTTP/3 200
response similar to the following:
* Added test.com:9443:127.0.0.1 to DNS cache
* Hostname test.com was found in DNS cache
* Trying 127.0.0.1:9443...
* QUIC cipher selection: TLS_AES_128_GCM_SHA256:TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:TLS_CHACHA20_POLY1305_SHA256:TLS_AES_128_CCM_SHA256
* Skipped certificate verification
* Connected to test.com (127.0.0.1) port 9443
* using HTTP/3
* [HTTP/3] [0] OPENED stream for https://test.com:9443/get
* [HTTP/3] [0] [:method: GET]
* [HTTP/3] [0] [:scheme: https]
* [HTTP/3] [0] [:authority: test.com]
* [HTTP/3] [0] [:path: /get]
* [HTTP/3] [0] [user-agent: curl/8.7.1]
* [HTTP/3] [0] [accept: */*]
> GET /get HTTP/3
> Host: test.com
> User-Agent: curl/8.7.1
> Accept: */*
>
* Request completely sent off
< HTTP/3 200
...
{
"args": {},
"headers": {
"Accept": "*/*",
"Content-Length": "0",
"Host": "test.com",
"User-Agent": "curl/8.7.1",
"X-Amzn-Trace-Id": "Root=1-6656013a-27da6b6a34d98e3e79baaf5b",
"X-Forwarded-Host": "test.com"
},
"origin": "172.19.0.1, 123.40.79.456",
"url": "http://test.com/get"
}
* Connection #0 to host test.com left intact
- For APISIX-3.9, test cases of Tongsuo will fail because the Tongsuo does not support QUIC TLS.
- APISIX-3.9 is based on NGINX-1.25.3 with vulnerabilities in HTTP/3 (CVE-2024-24989, CVE-2024-24990).