Application-Layer Protocol Negotiation (ALPN) is a Transport Layer Security (TLS) extension that allows the application layer to negotiate which protocol should be performed over a secure connection in a manner that avoids additional round trips and which is independent of the application-layer protocols. It is used to establish HTTP/2 connections without additional round trips (client and server can communicate over two ports previously assigned to HTTPS with HTTP/1.1 and upgrade to use HTTP/2 or continue with HTTP/1.1 without closing the initial connection).
OpenSSL since version 1.0.2 released in January 2015[5]
LibreSSL since version 2.1.3 released in January 2015[6]
mbed TLS (previously PolarSSL) since version 1.3.6 released in April 2014[7]
s2n since its original public release in June 2015.
wolfSSL (formerly CyaSSL) since version 3.7.0 released in October 2015[8]
Go (in the standard library crypto/tls package) since version 1.4 released in December 2014[9]
JSSE in Java since JDK 9 released in September 2017,[10] backported to JDK 8 released in April 2020[11]
Win32 SSPI since Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2 were released October 18, 2013[12]
History
Next Protocol Negotiation
In January 2010, Google introduced IETF standard draft describing Next Protocol Negotiation TLS extension.[13] This extension was used to negotiate experimental SPDY connections between Google Chrome and some of Google's servers. As SPDY evolved, NPN was replaced with ALPN.
Application-Layer Protocol Negotiation
On July 11, 2014, ALPN was published as RFC7301. ALPN replaces Next Protocol Negotiation (NPN) extension.[14]
TLS False Start was disabled in Google Chrome from version 20 (2012) onward except for websites with the earlier NPN extension.[15]
Example
ALPN is a TLS extension which is sent on the initial TLS handshake 'Client Hello', and it lists the protocols that the client (for example the web browser) supports:
The resulting 'Server Hello' from the web server will also contain the ALPN extension, and it confirms which protocol will be used for the HTTP request: