Re: [hybi] Extensibility mechanisms?

[Greg Wilkins <[e-mail]>]

Mike Belshe wrote:
> I have some possibly noobie questions.  I apologize if these have been
> answered before:
> 
> a) In 3.1.2, what is the structure for the length?  I assume its a 4byte
> integer?

Nope - that's the websocket length encoding.  Go figure!

> My biggest complaint:
> The logical unit of operation for a receiver of data over BWTP appears
> to be a "frame batch", not a "frame".  

As I said, it's really just a thought experiment... to see how
websocket might be extended.  I'll ponder your feedback at length
and see if the experiment can be improved.


> One last question, and I hope this won't sound like pride, because it is
> not - I just want to understand. Why not use SPDY for BWTP?  BWTP is
> definitely aimed at the same goals as SPDY, but SPDY is much further
> along.  

I completely agree!   SPDY also has something very vital that BWTP
does not have - interest from a browser vendor!

Perhaps I should switch to thought experiments with SPDY rather
than BWTP - but I wanted to play with the concept of a frame
batch, as I think that is vital to fragmentation of websocket
messages - even though SPDY would not use it.

I think BWTP as a HTTP transport is not very likely.
SPDY over websockets would be a good outcome and we should
strive to make websockets good enough to carry SPDY well.

But perhaps there is some room for a BWTP-like layer between
base websockets and SPDY to provide the fragmentation and
multi-channel stuff as something common to all websocket
users of those facilities.  So maybe I should drop the
HTTP stuff and focus on fragmentation and multiplexing?


> It seems odd to me that first, BWTP defines itself as a "sub-protocol"
> for WebSockets, but then section 3.4 defines how to run WebSockets over
> BWTP :-)  It sounds like indecision.

No - that is running the websocket API over BWTP over websocket
protocol.    Ie aggregating multiple websocket "connections"
over a single real websocket connection, using BWTP.

cheers