WebTransport Support

[glennosss]

What is WebTransport?

WebTransport is 'QUIC-native' client-server communication protocol to replace websockets.
It provides modern javascript API designed with web developers in mind; see https://web.dev/webtransport/

Supported since Chrome 97 (released 4 Jan 2022) - https://chromestatus.com/feature/4854144902889472
No firefox or safari support yet, but looks like firefox is in the process of adding support: mozilla/standards-positions#167

Why not websockets?

Websockets are not the way of the future. There will never be any H3 support for them - only Http1.1/H2/H2C support.

In comparison, there is H3 support for WebTransport now - and there's intended to be H2/H2C and possibly even Http1.1 support for WebTransport in the future; https://www.ietf.org/id/draft-ietf-webtrans-http2-02.html

Desired solution

It's obviously early days, but it's worth getting people aware that WebTransport is here now and can be used right now in Chrome/Chromium browsers (so already 70-80% of the browser market can use WebTransport!).

Reactor Netty is very focused on QUIC/H3 support. Initially support should likely be added here: https://github.com/netty/netty-incubator-codec-http3 - also see issue: netty/netty-incubator-codec-http3#153 . Then after this support can be added to Reactor Netty.

[violetagg]

@glennosss I'm adding this to the General Backlog. Once we have support in Netty, we can discuss in which Reactor Netty version this feature can be added.

[violetagg]

I'm closing this issue. If there is a WebTransport support in Netty we can reopen it. For the moment there are no plans for such support in Netty.
netty/netty-incubator-codec-http3#220