Re: [hybi] Web sockets and existing HTTP stacks

----- Original Message ----

> From: Jamie Lokier <jamie@shareable.org>
> To: Pieter Hintjens <ph@imatix.com>
> Cc: hybi@ietf.org
> Sent: Mon, 1 February, 2010 6:59:14 AM
> Subject: Re: [hybi] Web sockets and existing HTTP stacks
> 
> Pieter Hintjens wrote:
> > On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 10:22 AM, Ian Hickson 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.

This is an oft-repeated argument in this list, and in some xmlrpc/WS lists - and I am not very sure I buy the argument.
There is a reason why only http is allowed by a lot of firewalls and proxies - and it is a deployment choice the customer makes : whether driven by security concerns, convention, or other - it is a conscious decision at times (not always, I admit).

The reasoning that - port 80 is not blocked, so let us tunnel protocol xyz over it, is not a very good line of reasoning: it is not an invitation for protocol designers to tunnel arbitrary protocols on top of http.
Either you send http on top of port 80, or use something else - so that a deployment has control : both in terms of security concerns, intermediaries which can be deployed, contractual validation, etc.

My 2 cents.
Regards,
Mridul

> 
> 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
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