Re: [hybi] Web sockets and existing HTTP stacks

[Jamie Lokier <[e-mail]>]

Pieter Hintjens wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 10:22 AM, Ian Hickson <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> > Well, yeah. That's going to be the case with any protocol that shares its
> > port with HTTP. Web Socket tries to make this easier by making it at least
> > _possible_ to parse the header with an HTTP stack, if not necessarily
> > easy.
> 
> Do you not understand the impact of breaking (cheerfully or not) a
> 30-year standard respected by the entire Internet?
> 
> Post 80 is not shared by protocols.  Port 80 IS HTTP by definition, by
> contract.

It is a fact that internet access is only granted over ports 80
and/or 443 at some locations.

This is why WebSocket uses those.  It is for that practical reason,
not from a desire to break the port convention.  Thus there is no
point complaining on port convention grounds.

An earlier version of WebSocket proposed port 81, but that was changed to 80.

I do wonder if those sites only allowing port 80 all run intercepting
proxies on port 80 which would prevent WebSocket using it, so that it might
as well use port 81 anyway. Anybody know?

-- Jamie