Uploaded November 2025 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
The QUIC protocol has been around for some years now, and is now a mainstream end-to-end transport protocol on the Internet in the context of delivery of web-mediated content. The IETF has standardised two methods that a server can use to signal to a client that it supports QUIC connections. One method, used by the Chrome browser, is a "second-use" trigger where the content headers contain an indication to a client that it can use the QUIC protocol when it connects to the server for a second and subsequent time. A second method uses the DNS, with a new Query Type (HTTPS) that can contain a protocol capability field. This allows a client to use QUIC from the first fetch, but at a cost of an additional DNS query.
The presentation reports on a large scale measurement of these two QUIC trigger mechanisms, lookling at their relative use in the Internet today and their relative effectiveness.
Geoff Huston: Geoff Huston is the Chief Scientist at APNIC, the Regional Internet Registry for the Asia Pacific. Prior to this role he was the Chief Internet Architect at Telstra in Australia. He has served on the Internet Architecture Board and chaired a number of IETF Working Groups. His current research interests include routing, security and the DNS.
The QUIC protocol has been around for some years now, and is now a mainstream end-to-end transport protocol on the Internet in the context of delivery of web-mediated content. The IETF has standardised two methods that a server can use to signal to a client that it supports QUIC connections. One method, used by the Chrome browser, is a "second-use" trigger where the content headers contain an indication to a client that it can use the QUIC protocol when it connects to the server for a second and subsequent time. A second method uses the DNS, with a new Query Type (HTTPS) that can contain a protocol capability field. This allows a client to use QUIC from the first fetch, but at a cost of an additional DNS query.
The presentation reports on a large scale measurement of these two QUIC trigger mechanisms, lookling at their relative use in the Internet today and their relative effectiveness.
Geoff Huston: Geoff Huston is the Chief Scientist at APNIC, the Regional Internet Registry for the Asia Pacific. Prior to this role he was the Chief Internet Architect at Telstra in Australia. He has served on the Internet Architecture Board and chaired a number of IETF Working Groups. His current research interests include routing, security and the DNS.
