Re: [hybi] Web sockets and existing HTTP stacks

[Jamie Lokier <[e-mail]>]

Greg Wilkins wrote:
> Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
> >> Then if we ever get HTTP/1.2 or HTTP/2.0, websocket will not break!
> >
> > If the client tries to upgrade an HTTP/1.1 request to WebSocket and the
> > server gives an HTTP/1.2 or HTTP/2.0 response, then it had better break!
> > We'll need to adjust the client side of the protocol before we can let
> > servers respond with different versions of HTTP.
> 
> Why?
> 
> Saying HTTP/1.2 in a response line does not make the response
> version 1.2. The version of the response is controlled by the version of
> the request. The version in  the response says what the server is capable
> of.  A HTTP/1.2 capable server should be able to server 1.0 websocket
> clients without further breaking the http protocol by hacking about its
> version for one particular upgrade protocol.

This is not an issue, because a WebSocket server knows it's responding
to a WebSocket/1.0 client and can send the required response.

> So this is a perfect example how websockets will break future server
> code by not following the http contract.

It doesn't follow the HTTP contract to the letter, but it's not
illegal to "become" a 1.0 server :-)  (Though it would affect part of
RFC2616 which requires proxies to remember the HTTP version of recently
used servers).

It makes it hard to reuse existing server and proxy components,
but doesn't make it impossible to share ports with HTTP.

-- Jamie