Why is the protobuf protocol not directly implementable over HTTP/1.1?
sobes.tech AI
Answer from AI
Protocol Buffers (protobuf) is a data serialization format, not a transport protocol. It is typically used over transport protocols such as HTTP/2 or gRPC.
HTTP/1.1 has limitations that make it difficult to work with protobuf directly:
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Lack of multiplexing support: HTTP/1.1 does not support simultaneous transmission of multiple data streams over a single connection, which reduces performance when exchanging binary protobuf messages.
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Text-based protocol: HTTP/1.1 is oriented towards text data (e.g., HTML, JSON), and transmitting binary data requires additional encoding (e.g., base64), which increases size and reduces efficiency.
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No built-in support for binary frames: Unlike HTTP/2, HTTP/1.1 does not have a mechanism for efficient transmission of binary messages divided into frames.
Therefore, protobuf is more often used over HTTP/2 or specialized protocols (gRPC), which provide efficient binary data transmission, multiplexing, and low latency.