Re: [hybi] [whatwg] Web sockets and existing HTTP stacks

[Ian Hickson <[e-mail]>]

On Tue, 22 Dec 2009, Greg Wilkins wrote:
>
> Mark Nottingham wrote:
> > There was a fairly long thread initiated by Ian on squid-dev, FYI:
> >   http://marc.info/?t=124700786100001&r=1&w=2
> > 
> > That discussion is very similar to this one.
> 
> This is looking more an more like a hostile takeover bid of port 80.

Just so we're clear, Web Sockets (then TCPConnection) was originally 
completely independent of HTTP. It was then requested that the handshake 
be made HTTP-compatible such that an HTTP server could share its port with 
a Web Sockets server, so that port 443 could be used (needed to get around 
man-in-the-middle proxies). Even then, though, the Web Sockets spec 
originally specifically discouraged the use of port 443 and recommended 
the use of ports 81 and 815. It was only in response to feedback 
suggesting that discouraging port 443 was a bad idea that the spec was 
changed to be neutral on the matter. Then I tried registering ports 81 and 
815 and the IANA told me to just use ports 80 and 443.

So describing this as a "hostile takeover bid" is rather revisionist. It's 
only through three years of responding to feedback that we've reached this 
point, and I've done my best to ensure that the handshake really is 
compatible with HTTP to the extent necessary to handle the use cases that 
people have brought to the table.

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