Comments for Why can't we use https for everything?

Comment from Junti on 2008-12-23

2008-12-24T04:14:32Z

CAn we download from yahoo.com or gmail.com to outlook express or any other client?

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A comment on: Why can't we use https for everything?

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Comment from Ashraf Sabry on 2008-12-23

2008-12-23T17:35:53Z

I agree with everything in Chris Buechler's comment.

And I think that It's the encryption overhead which makes it impossible to make all the web sites use https.

You say that it's negligible compared to the power of contemporary machines, but this overhead when multiplied by the number of connected users will be something notable, while we already have a lot of web sites employ complicated frameworks (such as ASP.Net) which have overheads of their own.

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A comment on: Why can't we use https for everything?

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Comment from Chris Buechler on 2008-12-21

2008-12-21T23:48:27Z

The above are good points. Though I believe it's primarily cost that prevents sites from using it. Cost in that the website owner has to purchase the certificate, though those have gotten to be relatively cheap (they used to cost thousands of dollars a year, now you can find them for $30/year). Another added cost in that each HTTPS site must have a dedicated public IP address. Most websites use shared hosting where there are hundreds or thousands of sites sharing a single IP, using host headers to differentiate. Host headers aren't compatible with HTTPS. Having a dedicated public IP for each site would raise the hosting cost. Also HTTPS increases the server load because it must encrypt and decrypt all traffic. That again leads to higher hosting costs because the provider can't load up as many sites on a single server, so each customer would have to pay a bigger chunk of the server hardware costs.

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A comment on: Why can't we use https for everything?

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