WebSocket Radar: “Expanding Cross-Site Comet Options”
Kris Zyp of Site Pen recently posted an interesting article on Comet Daily, which covers the topic of cross-site Comet options. He calls out a few notable solutions, and also notes WebSocket as:
WebSocket is almost certainly the most comprehensive solution for Comet.
One fault with the article is the statement “I would expect to see this in the generation of browsers after next (FF4 or FF3.2, IE9, Safari.next)”, which implies there is a long wait for WebSocket support. Fortunately, this could not be farther from the truth. Starting Sept. 29th, Kaazing with its Kaazing Enterprise Gateway offering will provide native support for WebSockets, as well as a JavaScript emulation layer for more antiquated browsers such as IE 5.5. This means that any modern browser can take advantage of WebSockets with in a few weeks time.
Does Kaazing’s JavaScript emulation layer provide full duplex streaming communication on a single TCP/IP connection without creating HTTP requests and responses? Unless there is some magic that I am not aware of, this is not possible with JavaScript, although you can get a little closer with Flash, but then you are in the world of plugins, no longer a pure JavaScript solution, and subject to the cross-domain mechanisms of Flash (much different than Web sockets). While it is commendable that you are using the Web sockets API, I think you are being dishonest to sell Kaazing as having native support for WebSockets if it is not truly providing full duplex on a single TCP/IP connection from the browser with the full cross-site capabilities of Web sockets.
Hi Kris.
Thanks for the comment. You are correct, it would be dishonest to sell Kaazing Gateway as a “true” native solution. We do provide native socket access via plugins (as you described) using the Flash plugin or other plugin that are available. This is our strategy for providing a single socket connection. However, if a plugin is not available we fall back to a bi-directional Comet transport. The transport is dependent on the connected agent and network hazards such as proxies. Thank you for asking for clarity.