HTTP/1.1 isn't going to solve all our problems. Don't get me wrong - it rules, but for the most part, it only deals with speeding up requests and responses, so don't expect it to make the Internet scream.
When you first implement HTTP/1.1, you're probably not going to see a drastic change in bandwidth savings - maybe a few percent at best. But if servers implement these transport compressions universally, the savings could be about 15 percent. Add in PNG and stylesheets, and there could be up to a 35 percent savings compared to HTTP/1.0.
But when will we see all these improvements? Well, like I mentioned before, Jigsaw, a Java-based server still in alpha, already supports HTTP/1.1, and Apache 1.2, which should come out in mid-April, will also support it. As for browsers, I guess we'll just have to wait and see. HTTP/1.1 is designed to work best with some of the "newer" additions to the Web such as stylesheets and PNG. Netscape and MSIE 4.0 allegedly will support PNG, and IE already supports stylesheets, but as for when either of them will take full advantage of HTTP/1.1 ... well, there's always the next round of betas.
But regardless of the whims of Microsoft and Netscape, the RFC makes it clear that HTTP/1.1 won't completely solve all the Net's traffic problems, though at least it will help.
