Re: [Webtransport] Does WebTransport need a reliable, in-order message abstraction?

[Bernard Aboba <[e-mail]>]

Alan said: 

> Is replacing WebSockets with WebTransport one of our goals?  If so, I think we need to address the gap by adding this abstraction.  If not, we should explicitly mention that this abstraction doesn’t exist, and instruct developers to use WebSocket instead.

[BA] Thanks for bringing this up.

When we first started on what would become the RTCQuicTransport API, the goal was to support all the transport modes of the RTCDataChannel API, which was modelled after WebSockets. 

However, we realized that this required design of a framing protocol on top of QUIC reliable streams. After verifying that a simple framing protocol was implementable as a JS library on top of the RTCQuicTransport prototype, providing many of the services of RTCDataChannel, the “proof of concept” was considered done and since then not much has happened.

This is a good example of how things can fall between the cracks of protocol design and API design. “Assume we have a framing protocol designed in IETF....”