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Is it possible to A/B test http/2 with http/1.1 using same domain name in Akamai?

priyankatanvani
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I wouldn't recommend having both http/1.1 and http/2 on same server.

My suggestion would be perform all your testing on http/1.1 now and capture the details. Once done. You can enable http/2 and run the same testing again for comparison.

or if you can configure a separate domain for test then great.

I would say its safe to implement http/2 in akamai, to start getting the benefit of http/2 from Akamai servers to end user browser. Then you can explore on how to enable http/2 between akamai and origin server.

Vinod
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It's not the same as A/B testing but you disable HTTP/2 in the client and test with and without HTTP/2. Obviously that means you have to have control of the client so can't be used for random testing like you'd normally do for A/B testing.

Webpagetest even allows you to test this and then you can run multiple tests from multiple locations and connection settings. For Chrome you can provide the --disable-http2 command line flag under the Advanced Settings->Chrome page

WebPageTest without HTTP/2

You can so similar with Firefox as detailed here.

Barry Pollard
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  • If we leave the A/B test aspect, will akamai allow that? Can we configure it in akamai? some of my production servers will have http2 enabled and some still with http/1.1 – priyankatanvani Jul 26 '18 at 11:15
  • What do you mean "if we leave the A/B test aspect"? Sorry I don't understand the question. – Barry Pollard Jul 26 '18 at 18:18
  • I have one load balancer and 5 origin servers. For every request Akamai hits the LB and the request is served randomly by any of the server. Is it okay if i enable HTTP/2 in one of the origin servers? How will it impact my system? – priyankatanvani Aug 02 '18 at 11:46
  • The client will be served by Akamai. So it will always serve HTTP/2 if supported regardless of what the origin server uses. Also not sure why you need 5 origin servers if you are using Akamai in front of it? Surely it takes the load and you need two (for redundancy) at best? Unless you’re a highly used website and most requests end up at an origin server? Think you need to explain your setup more. – Barry Pollard Aug 02 '18 at 12:00
  • Actually, the content served is not static, and most requests do end up at the origin servers. – priyankatanvani Aug 03 '18 at 05:51