Live data from Hacker News

Why does gRPC insist on trailers?

carlmastrangelo.com

1–10 of 136 posts

Re: Why does gRPC insist on trailers?

#3
> As an aside, HTTP/2 is technically superior to WebSockets. HTTP/2 keeps the semantics of the web, while WS does not.

WTF is this? Those are different layer protocols. WebSocket can run on top of HTTP/2.

It's like saying TLS is technically superior to TCP, or IP is superior to copper cables.

Reference: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8441.html

Re: Why does gRPC insist on trailers?

#4
I had never heard of HTTP trailers. So FYI

> The Trailer response header allows the sender to include additional fields at the end of chunked messages in order to supply metadata that might be dynamically generated while the message body is sent, such as a message integrity check, digital signature, or post-processing status.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Tr...

Re: Why does gRPC insist on trailers?

#5
post #3

> As an aside, HTTP/2 is technically superior to WebSockets. HTTP/2 keeps the semantics of the web, while WS does not. WTF is this? Those are different layer protocols. WebSocket can run on top of HTTP/2. It's like saying TLS is technically superior to TCP, or IP is superior to copper cables. Reference: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8441.html

I’m not a web developer, but that RFC, which talks about bootstrapping, talks about using the CONNECT method to “transition” to the WebSockets protocol. Which matches what I thought the CONNECT method does: Switch to a protocol that is not HTTP?

But I only skimmed the introduction, did I miss something?

Re: Why does gRPC insist on trailers?

#6
post #3

> As an aside, HTTP/2 is technically superior to WebSockets. HTTP/2 keeps the semantics of the web, while WS does not. WTF is this? Those are different layer protocols. WebSocket can run on top of HTTP/2. It's like saying TLS is technically superior to TCP, or IP is superior to copper cables. Reference: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8441.html

[deleted]

Re: Why does gRPC insist on trailers?

#7
post #5
post #3

> As an aside, HTTP/2 is technically superior to WebSockets. HTTP/2 keeps the semantics of the web, while WS does not. WTF is this? Those are different layer protocols. WebSocket can run on top of HTTP/2. It's like saying TLS is technically superior to TCP, or IP is superior to copper cables. Reference: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8441.html

I’m not a web developer, but that RFC, which talks about bootstrapping , talks about using the CONNECT method to “transition” to the WebSockets protocol. Which matches what I thought the CONNECT method does: Switch to a protocol that is not HTTP? But I only skimmed the introduction, did I miss something?

normally uses GET and the Upgrade header, not CONNECT

Re: Why does gRPC insist on trailers?

#10
post #8

Author doesn't support the case for grpc being a "failure". I wonder by what measure. It's certainly pretty popular.

Being able to use gRPC in browsers was an explicit goal of the project, and that is impossible. gRPC-Web has to use a modified version of the protocol that has a limited feature set and performs worse for the reasons described in the article.
Post reply on HN