HTTP1

HTTP/1, also known as HTTP1 or HTTP version 1, refers to the first major revision of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web. It was standardized in 1996 and has since undergone several minor updates. HTTP/1.0, the initial release, was simple and stateless, meaning each request was treated independently. Key features included the introduction of request methods like GET and POST, and response status codes to indicate the outcome of a request.

HTTP/1.1, released in 1997 and updated in 1999 and 2014, brought significant improvements. It introduced persistent connections, allowing multiple requests and responses to be sent over a single TCP connection, reducing latency. Pipelining was also introduced, enabling clients to send multiple requests without waiting for each response, although it had practical limitations. HTTP/1.1 also supported caching more effectively through headers like Cache-Control and ETag. It enabled host-header fields, allowing multiple websites to be hosted on the same IP address. Despite its widespread adoption and foundational role, HTTP/1.1 faced challenges with performance, especially as web pages became more complex with numerous assets. This led to the development of newer protocols like HTTP/2 and HTTP/3.