Why TLS 1.3 Handshakes Are Faster (And What Changed Under the Hood)

The 1-RTT handshake and what changed TLS 1.3 (RFC 8446, finalized August 2018) isn’t a tuning pass on TLS 1.2. It’s a different protocol wearing the same name. The headline feature is a 1-RTT handshake instead of 2-RTT, but the interesting part is why that was even possible: an entire class of key exchange got…