Re: [hybi] Extensibility mechanisms?

[Ian Hickson <[e-mail]>]

On Fri, 16 Apr 2010, Greg Wilkins wrote:
> 
> The whole point of having a standard like websocket, is so that the 
> network infrastructure can implement the RFC and then we have known 
> semantics over that connection that intermediaries can at least handle 
> correctly, but may also do clever stuff with.

That wasn't even on my list of reasons for originally coming up with 
TCPConnection, let alone the main reason.

The main reason for the Web Socket protocol is to have one protocol that 
the browsers can all implement in an interoperable fashion so that servers 
can implement things once and have them work with all browsers. In the 
ideal deployment the connection is wrapped in end-to-end TLS, so the 
intermediaries can't do anything with it. There were only two reasons for 
even allowing unencrypted Web Socket originally: requiring amateurs to 
figure out TLS seemed like too high a bar, and there is still some concern 
that when the connection is being used for entirely public information, 
the TLS connection overhead is too expensive to justify.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'