The QUIC protocol secures data transmission and improves resource access efficiency for connections between clients and DCDN nodes. This topic introduces the QUIC protocol, how to enable it, and its billing details.
QUIC
Built on UDP, QUIC performs well on weak networks and maintains service usability despite significant packet loss and network latency. QUIC implements different congestion control algorithms at the application layer, independent of OS or kernel support. This flexibility makes QUIC an ideal solution for services bottlenecked by TCP optimization.
Alibaba Cloud DCDN currently supports Layer 7 QUIC.
QUIC types
- IETF QUIC is the standards-based version.
- We strongly recommend that you use IETF QUIC.
How it works
Client requirements
- Google Chrome can send QUIC requests directly to Alibaba Cloud DCDN because DCDN supports the standard HTTP/3 protocol.
- Self-developed apps must integrate a QUIC-compatible network library, such as lsquic-client, Cronet, ngtcp2, or quiche.
QUIC billing
- Alibaba Cloud DCDN identifies requests transmitted over UDP as QUIC requests.
- For requests made over HTTPS, DCDN checks the underlying transport protocol. Requests that use the QUIC protocol are billed as QUIC requests; otherwise, they are billed as standard HTTPS requests.
How to identify QUIC requests
This section describes how to identify QUIC requests by using Google Chrome.
In the following figure, the "h3" value in the Protocol column indicates that the request used the QUIC protocol.
