OCSP Stapling: How CloudFlare Just Made SSL 30% Faster
Oct 29, 2012Matthew Prince
Summary
This post introduces OCSP Stapling as a significant performance enhancement for SSL connections. It explains the overhead associated with traditional OCSP/CRL checks for certificate revocation and details how OCSP Stapling reduces this overhead by 'stapling' the OCSP response to the SSL handshake, making HTTPS connections approximately 30% faster. Cloudflare's network-wide implementation of this feature is highlighted as a key contribution to making SSL adoption more appealing.
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