A deep dive into why gRPC was built on HTTP/2 rather than HTTP/1.1. Covers the key HTTP/2 features that make gRPC work well: binary framing, multiplexing (multiple streams over one TCP connection), HPACK header compression (85-90% reduction), and built-in flow control. Explains how these map to gRPC's four RPC patterns (unary, server streaming, client streaming, bidirectional streaming). Also includes concrete performance numbers (20-40% latency reduction, 67% fewer TCP connections in microservices), trade-offs like debugging complexity and load balancer compatibility, and how Protocol Buffers' binary format complements HTTP/2's binary frames.
