Performance comparison OTLP over gRPC vs. HTTP

[breedx-splk]

Looking at the collector performance page https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/blob/main/docs/performance.md got me wondering if there's a measurable difference between OTLP/gRPC vs. OTLP/HTTP. Has anybody looked into that?

The java agent is likely switching to a low-dependency OTLP/HTTP exporter as default (gRPC pulls in a lot of deps!)...and I wonder if this matters through a performance lens.

[bogdandrutu]

In java even HTTP client brings lots of deps :) I think performance wise they are pretty similar.

[breedx-splk]

The number of dependencies has no direct impact on the performance tho, it's really more about the underlying protocols, encodings, and how its all put together.

In any case, it would be good to have numbers backing this up, right?

[ishankhare07]

Has anybody here any idea about the binary size implications in case of http vs grpc protocols – talking here in perspective of the go SDK

[utezduyar]

It would also be nice to see the network band with comparison. I would imagine it would make a difference if a commercial collector is used which charges their customer per CPU / network traffic.