tls-pq-bench/docs/protocols.md

Protocol modes

The benchmark supports two application-layer modes over TLS:

1) raw (custom protocol) -- primary

Goal: minimal overhead and full control over request/response sizes.

Wire format

Client -> Server:

• 8 bytes unsigned LE: requested response size N

Server -> Client:

• N bytes payload (deterministic pattern)

Properties:

• easy TTLB measurement (client reads exactly N)
• minimal parsing and allocation noise (can pre-allocate)
• stable across HTTP stacks

2) http1 (hyper) -- secondary

Goal: realistic request/response behavior.

Client sends:

• GET /bytes/N (or GET /?n=N)

Server replies:

• HTTP/1.1 200 with Content-Length = N
• body = N bytes payload (deterministic)

Properties:

• closer to real-world web traffic
• introduces HTTP parsing/headers overhead (acceptable for realism tests)
• TTLB becomes “time to full response body”