jetty / jetty/jetty.project

Provide HTTP Client Version discovery mode for HTTP/3

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Enhancement
Dominant language
Java
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Description

**Jetty version(s)**
12.1.10

**Enhancement Description**
According to https://jetty.org/docs/jetty/12.1/programming-guide/client/http.html#transport-dynamic:

> HTTP/1.1 and HTTP/2 are compatible because they both use TCP, while HTTP/3 is incompatible with previous HTTP versions because it uses QUIC.

> Only compatible HTTP versions can negotiate the HTTP protocol version to use via ALPN, and only compatible HTTP versions can be upgraded from an older version to a newer version.

OTOH the Java HTTP Client uses some built-in discovery mode described in https://docs.oracle.com/en/java/javase/26/docs/api/java.net.http/java/net/http/HttpOption.Http3DiscoveryMode.html#ANY to figure out if HTTP/3 is supported by the server.

This is related to https://github.com/jetty/jetty.project/issues/11407 however this is not relying on `Alt-Svc` header being returned from an HTTP 1/2 request but rather about trying the connection in advance via both TCP and UDP (QUIC) in parallel and use the one which first returns.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

Start with Jetty's HTTP client transport-dynamic documentation and the related issue #11407, then compare the requested behavior with Java's HttpOption.Http3DiscoveryMode documentation. Done means defining and implementing a discovery mode that attempts TCP and QUIC connections in parallel and uses whichever succeeds first, without relying on Alt-Svc.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
java
Domain
networking
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Quiet
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
45/100

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