Re: [hybi] Last Call: <draft-ietf-hybi-thewebsocketprotocol-10.txt> (The WebSocket protocol) to Proposed Standard

[Dave Cridland <[e-mail]>]

On Tue Jul 19 12:51:16 2011, Iñaki Baz Castillo wrote:
> 2011/7/11 The IESG <[e-mail]>:
> > The IESG has received a request from the BiDirectional or
> > Server-Initiated HTTP WG (hybi) to consider the following  
> document:
> > - 'The WebSocket protocol'
> >  <draft-ietf-hybi-thewebsocketprotocol-10.txt> as a Proposed  
> Standard
> 
> Hi, I assume there is no interest in making DNS SRV mechanism  
> exposed
> in http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ibc-websocket-dns-srv-02 part of
> the WebSocket core specification, neither referencing it (in the  
> same
> way RFC 3261 "SIP protocol" mandates the usage of RFC 3263 "Locating
> SIP servers").
> 
> As said before, making such DNS SRV specification an extension (so
> present in other document) will mean no success at all, as WebSocket
> client implementors (i.e. webbrowser vendors) will not be mandated  
> to
> implement it and service providers could not rely on the support of
> DNS SRV in web browsers. So nobody will use them (because IE10  
> decided
> not to implement it, for example). IMHO this is sad due the real
> advantages DNS SRV provides for a protocol like WebSocket.
> 
> Yes, in HTTP there is no special DNS stuff, all the load-balancing  
> and
> failover mechanism are done at server side with very complex and
> expensive solutions (www.facebook.com resolves to a single IPv4  
> !!!!).
> The question is: should we also inherit every HTTP limitation in
> WebSocket?

I agree wholeheartedly with this, and strongly recommend that  
mandatory use of SRV is included in the core protocol.

I think with HTTP's very short lived requests, then it's possible to  
work around the lack of SRV support (at a cost), but the benefit is  
markedly higher with the long-lived, stateful sessions we're  
anticipating with WebSocket.

Dave.
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