For more discussion on this topic, please refer to these discussion threads: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/spdy-dev/_uvxTJkeCP0 https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/spdy-dev/XDudMZSq3e4

And note that your reference is slightly misleading (I don't think you intended this). It's true, the vast majority of hosts supporting SPDY are running nginx. In practice though, the vast majority of these hosts are Cloudflare or WordPress.com hosted sites. Both run newer versions of nginx with SPDY/3.1 support.

I just made the (implied) observation that anyone deploying nginx shouldn't even bother enabling spdy in 1.4 (stable) because effectively nothing will use it anymore. It was something that people who use "stable" software were able to benefit from starting in May 2013, but it is now no longer and won't be again until nginx reaches 1.6. That is, unless spdy/3 is dropped in favor of spdy/4 by then.

(edit: fixed date)

Yours - "So unless someone has the resources to test and deploy unstable web servers, it effectively means you shouldn't bother with spdy at this point."

Mine - "I think it's a fair assessment that supporting experimental technologies requires more engineering resources. Everyone has to do the cost/benefit analysis themselves."

Don't even bother building nginx 1.4 with spdy support or configuring it since no one can use it. From May 2013 until now there was a benefit to end-users. There no longer is.

If you want to provide the speed benefits of spdy to users, you now need to run unstable nginx or mod_spdy.

Pattern 1:

    > Statement
    >> Counterstatement!
    >>> You're saying the same thing.
    >>>> I am? Oh. I *am*. Whoops!

    > Statement
    >> Agree with tone of disagreement.
    >>> Disagree on disagreement, while offering up facts to somehow agree *harder*
    >>>> Rebuttal, optional restatement of disagreement, optional statement(s) further
    >>>> reinforcing the common point on which we just can't agree to agree

As the posts below, "mainline" is considered stable enough for production.

A rose by any other name?

The current nginx 1.5.12 has patches to fix an overflow issue with the spdy support so it's gotten at least some attention paid to it since the feature was released. I expect spdy3.1 support will only get better as more and more people move to the latest version of nginx.

Check http://nginx.org/en/CHANGES for the changelog.

Source: http://forum.nginx.org/read.php?2,221377,221390#msg-221390

(edit: clarified wording)

Anyway, doesn't spdy/2 have a huge security flaw in certificate management? I don't remember it well. If that's the case, it's good that they droped it.

Also the current mainline 1.5 version has implementation of spdy/3.