HTTP and HTTPs

The Classic Era (HTTP/1.1 and HTTP/2)

Historically, both standard HTTP and secure HTTPS relied entirely on TCP at the Transport layer.

HTTP (Unencrypted): Uses TCP Port 80. HTTPS (Encrypted): Uses TCP Port 443 (this is just HTTP with a TLS/SSL security layer wrapped over the TCP connection).

The Modern Era (HTTP/3 and QUIC)

HTTP/3 abandons TCP and instead runs on a newer transport protocol called QUIC (Quick UDP Internet Connections), which was originally developed by Google.

Because encryption is structurally mandatory in QUIC, there is no such thing as unencrypted “HTTP over UDP.” If a connection is using HTTP/3, it is automatically secure, encrypted HTTPS traffic.

HTTP with TLS is HTTPS

TLS is the cryptographic protocol