HTTP/2 request header compression
<p>Since I'm not an expert, I have a general question concerning HTTP/2.</p>

<p>So as commonly known, HTTP2 compresses headers to reduce the message size. Does this only apply to the response or also to the request? If do a small experiment and run two small HTTP servers, one using version 1.1 and another one using version 2, let both send the exact same content and then request both pages in Firefox, I can see that the response header size is dramatically smaller for the HTTP/2 version. However, the request header size is almost the same. In my understanding this makes sense, because the browser doesn't know in advance, if the server is HTTP/2 capable and therefore can't compress the headers in upfront. Am I right? And if so, is there a way to "enforce" the client to use HTTP/2 (with client I don't mean a brwoser, but a programatic one) and also compress request headers?</p>

<p>And another question: if I wanted to benchmark HTTP/1.1 vs. HTTP/2 performance under load, what would a useful test setup look like, which parameters would be varied and which metrics would it make sense to measure (RTT, TTFB, ...?)</p>