Mibbit supports WebSocket, some initial numbers.

http://axod.blogspot.com/2009/12/websocket-some-numbers.html

by axod • 17 years ago

84 19 17 years ago

axod.blogspot.com

cmelbye• 17 years ago

Very interesting and exciting. I'd like to see some numbers on lag though, as it seems that WebSocket uses just about the same amount of bandwidth.

flog• 17 years ago

I think the bit outstanding question is about scale.

The comet connection requires 2 keep-alive HTTP connections to make a full-duplex connection. So obviously a single socket connection doubles the number of users a single box can handle - does it actually scale that way?? Don't know.

anonjon2• 17 years ago

You've also got to wonder about the extra overhead of running deflate on everything that you send with the XHR version of the code, and why there couldn't be some sort of compression applied to the packets sent through WebSocket if it is a really big deal.

Also, obviously, the smaller your send/receive, the better the improvement that your websocket code would see over XHR. I can imagine an application of websockets where you open multiple sockets and send a number of constantly updating data-streams from the server.

A lot of articles seem to imply that websockets is simply XHR 2.0, and I'm sure it will be used as such for a while.

But it seems to me that there are certain things that you can do with this that simply cannot be done efficiently with other technology.

(Imagine being able to smoothly track a mouse cursor or watch another person edit a document in real time, how would you do that with XHR?).

axod4• 17 years ago

>> "or watch another person edit a document in real time, how would you do that with XHR?"

Works fine on Etherpad.

Having said that, I agree, the lag with WebSocket is likely to be a less. Hopefully WebSocket will get the ability to do deflate/gzip soon as well. That would make it a very clear winner.

axod4• 17 years ago

FWIW also:

Browser usage on Mibbit main client (Snapshot):

  FX3: 65%
  Chrome: 12%
  IE8: 7%
  IE7: 6%
  Opera: 3%
  IE6: 3%
  Safari: 3%
  FX2: 1%

Chrome has really grown at an astounding rate in the webapp usage world at any rate.

mattmaroon2• 17 years ago

We're getting 9.4% on our sci-fi game. Geeks do love Chrome.

flashingpumpkin• 17 years ago

Wanna share what game? You might get another player ;)

roc• 17 years ago

I'm a Chrome loving geek, but I'm far outnumbered by the non-technical, non-geeks that I've converted to Chrome based on its superior security and stability.

Among my friends, that's step 1 when you get roped into doing family tech support anymore: remove the IE shortcuts, install Chrome. Only sometimes changing the chrome shortcut to the IE icon...

axod4• 17 years ago

Even my mum uses Chrome now :/ I think it's going to be more mainstream than firefox in the end.

notauser• 17 years ago

Thanks, that's really interesting.

I have been playing with web workers (http://github.com/revis/Really-Cloudy) and one thing that worried me was the number of people with capable browsers. From your data it looks like that isn't a problem for technical audiences.

ideamonk• 17 years ago

I'm so happy to see FX3 at 65% and less domination of IE :)

Atleast some webapp makers and users don't care about IE.

dschobel• 17 years ago

Great post and crash course in long lived HTTP.

Did you write your own http server/library or are you using an existing one for the current Comet implementation?

axod4• 17 years ago

I wrote one in Java/NIO. It runs in a single thread, does SSL, async DNS lookups, proxying, comet, websocket.

I really hope someday to open source it sometime. If only to show people that development in Java doesn't have to be horrible.

duskwuff• 17 years ago

What I don't get is why more people haven't been using Flash's socket support (XMLSocket, and the more general-purpose flash.net.Socket in AS3) for this sort of thing. Flash is installed on practically all web browsers, and you can still write the rest of your app in JS if you want by using ExternalInterface.

For extra credit, you could probably write a WebSocket implementation IN Flash using these techniques. Anyone on it?

mcav• 17 years ago

There are a lot of simple flash shims out there -- I'm using one for my app, with everything else written in javascript. For me, switching to websocket would be more or less ceremonial rather than practical.

Mibbit supports WebSocket, some initial numbers.

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