Re: [hybi] Frame size

[Jamie Lokier <[e-mail]>]

Justin Erenkrantz wrote:
> a few folks talked about Comet
> apps they've seen transferring large XML files.  Silly perhaps, but
> that's what the app writers did...trying to get them to change is
> pointless.

Silly, few?  Most AJAX requesting code I've seen fetches a bit of HTML
to replace in an existing page, such as replacing a DIV or table row,
or the main area in a page (i.e. the bit which isn't border buttons
etc.)  That's easily a megabyte of response in many web pages...
It's hard to see why Comet would avoid that pattern.

Every so often, someone says that big requests should not be using
WebSocket but should go out of line, using HTTP.

But if you can send a large blob of text over WebSocket, why would
anyone *not* do that?  The effects of receiving a short update message
over WebSocket and then issuing a long HTTP request are twofold:

   - More complicated application code (unnecessary)
   - Higher latency (extra round trip + possible DNS, TCP, SSL setup)

It follows that sending large messages over WebSocket is perfectly
natural and might be best, if the alternative is to get the same large
message over HTTP using XmlHttpRequest.

-- Jamie