Re: [hybi] I-D Action: draft-ietf-hybi-thewebsocketprotocol-13.txt

[John Tamplin <[e-mail]>]

On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 8:32 AM, Takeshi Yoshino <[e-mail]> wrote:

> Yes. That's unexpected side-effect of addition of MASK bit. Without the
> flag, there was no information in a frame if it's masked or not so client
> just had to follow what the spec says. So, client never encountered such
> situation.
>
> But we don't have to keep it as legal frame just because it's possible.
>

I expect it will get used as a WS-variant when dealing with non-browser
clients -- ie, between a frontend which handles
masking/aggregation/deaggregation/SSL and the ultimate backend, I would not
be surprised if there were unmasked client->server frames.  As long as all
the browser clients all enforce masking on their connections, the problem
masking was added for is averted.

specific conditions on the cases we're not interested in.
>>
>
> We should make the spec clear on whether WebSocket client implementation
> must be prepared for masked frame or not. I'm fine once it's clear.
>

There really is no point -- the server controls both the mask and the
content, so they can arrange for any sequence on the wire regardless.  The
only case I can imagine where it might be useful is peer-to-peer WS
communication between browsers, and if we ever implement something like that
we can deal with masking then.

-- 
John A. Tamplin
Software Engineer (GWT), Google