More QUIC, How?
Context
At IETF 124, Lars Eggert organised a side meeting titled "More QUIC, How?" to discuss the current state of QUIC adoption on the Internet. The discussion surfaced a number of useful data points and highlighted a broad set of deployment challenges across different parts of the ecosystem (clients, servers, networks, and intermediaries).
While the session was productive, there has been no structured follow-up or consolidation of findings that could inform broader architectural or operational guidance.
Why
QUIC is now a foundational transport for HTTP/3 and other emerging protocols, with clear technical advantages over TCP+TLS, including:
- Improved latency and user experience
- Resilience via connection migration
- Native support for multiplexing without head-of-line blocking
- Support for both reliable streams and unreliable datagrams within a single connection
Despite these benefits, adoption remains uneven across the Internet. Anecdotally and in operator discussions, barriers include:
- Operational visibility and troubleshooting challenges
- Middlebox interference and network ossification concerns
- Deployment complexity (e.g., load balancing, observability, fallback strategies)
- Unclear incentives or risk tradeoffs for certain operators and enterprises
This raises a broader architectural question: what is preventing QUIC from becoming the default transport where it is technically superior?
Next Step
A technical IAB discussion to understand and decide possible next steps
- Whether this topic deserves a dedicated workshop
- Scope and framing
- Potential contributors and stakeholders
- Expected outputs
Reference
Relevant discussion on QUIC mailing list
More QUIC, How?
Context
At IETF 124, Lars Eggert organised a side meeting titled "More QUIC, How?" to discuss the current state of QUIC adoption on the Internet. The discussion surfaced a number of useful data points and highlighted a broad set of deployment challenges across different parts of the ecosystem (clients, servers, networks, and intermediaries).
While the session was productive, there has been no structured follow-up or consolidation of findings that could inform broader architectural or operational guidance.
Why
QUIC is now a foundational transport for HTTP/3 and other emerging protocols, with clear technical advantages over TCP+TLS, including:
Despite these benefits, adoption remains uneven across the Internet. Anecdotally and in operator discussions, barriers include:
This raises a broader architectural question: what is preventing QUIC from becoming the default transport where it is technically superior?
Next Step
A technical IAB discussion to understand and decide possible next steps
Reference
Relevant discussion on QUIC mailing list