#TIL: There are two ways to trigger use of the #HTTP3 / #QUIC #protocol in #webbrowsers:

#Chromium and #Firefox #browsers always start with #HTTP1 / #HTTP2, look for the “alt-svc” header in the response and switch to HTTP3 for subsequent requests if they find it. I knew that much.

But #Safari will instead query #DNS for the "#HTTPS" record and use that as a trigger. So it can work HTTP3-only for the cost of an additional DNS query. Unfortunately, the record type isn't widely supported yet.

Source: https://www.potaroo.net/ispcol/2025-07/quic-trigger.html

… and some #wireshark-ing to inspect the behavior of #Firefox as it wasn't mentioned in the article.

ISP Column - July 2025

@data0 This is a good recent article studying browsers' behaviors: https://blog.apnic.net/2025/07/02/bootstrapping-http-1-1-http-2-and-http-3/
Bootstrapping HTTP/1.1, HTTP/2, and HTTP/3 | APNIC Blog

Guest Post: A packet-level tour through redirects, TLS negotiation, and protocol discovery.

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