How We Improved Reliability of our WebSocket Connections

#1

Post by philfreo » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 2:49 PM UTC

How We Improved Reliability of our WebSocket Connections
making.close.com

Re: How We Improved Reliability of our WebSocket Connections

#2

Post by heliostatic » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 3:05 PM UTC

> You need to prove that what you think your code does is truly what happens.

Such a good insight -- seems obvious, but too often the source of gotchas, bad data, and bad user experience.

Re: How We Improved Reliability of our WebSocket Connections

#3

Post by renewiltord » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 3:54 PM UTC

This is why so many crypto exchanges send ping and pongs periodically as requests and not as control.

It’s application layer keepalive.

Re: How We Improved Reliability of our WebSocket Connections

#4

Post by moffkalast » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 4:04 PM UTC

> The (sadly all too) common approach to rarely occurring bugs & edge cases: Pretend like the problem doesn't exist. Blame it on faulty networking, solar flares, etc.

How to tell if someone hasn't been working with a piece of software in production yet? They've never blamed a bug on cosmic radiation yet :D

Re: How We Improved Reliability of our WebSocket Connections

#5

Post by wojcikstefan » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 4:06 PM UTC

moffkalast wrote: post #4

> The (sadly all too) common approach to rarely occurring bugs & edge cases: Pretend like the problem doesn't exist. Blame it on faulty networking, solar flares, etc. How to tell if someone hasn't been working with a piece of software in production yet? They've never blamed a bug on cosmic radiation yet :D

Remember to always blame the user… or the universe!

Re: How We Improved Reliability of our WebSocket Connections

#6

Post by politician » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 4:17 PM UTC

Good to know that WebSocket API is broken by design. Thanks W3C!

https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=13104

Re: How We Improved Reliability of our WebSocket Connections

#7

Post by wojcikstefan » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 4:21 PM UTC

politician wrote: post #6

Good to know that WebSocket API is broken by design. Thanks W3C! https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=13104

Yes! I was both surprised and confused when I saw this. Unless I'm missing something, it means that every application implementing WebSockets has to reinvent the wheel, creating their client-side ping/pong handler using Data Frames since browsers don't automatically send nor expose an API for sending/acting on Control Frames.

Re: How We Improved Reliability of our WebSocket Connections

#8

Post by ignoramous » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 4:22 PM UTC

wojcikstefan wrote: post #5

moffkalast wrote: post #4

> The (sadly all too) common approach to rarely occurring bugs & edge cases: Pretend like the problem doesn't exist. Blame it on faulty networking, solar flares, etc. How to tell if someone hasn't been working with a piece of software in production yet? They've never blamed a bug on cosmic radiation yet :D

Remember to always blame the user… or the universe!

Relevant: https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/lKXe3HUG2l4, The mess we are in (2014), Joe Armstrong

Re: How We Improved Reliability of our WebSocket Connections

#9

Post by david422 » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 4:28 PM UTC

Interesting read, thanks. I've delved into websockets and hit some interesting issues. I don't think I've had this scenario - that I know of - but this is good to know.

Re: How We Improved Reliability of our WebSocket Connections

#10

Post by news_to_me » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 4:32 PM UTC

politician wrote: post #6

Good to know that WebSocket API is broken by design. Thanks W3C! https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=13104

This is what confused me. The discussion made sense to leave it up to the browser to implement, but I can't understand why they didn't require it in the browser WebSocket implementation — they even suggested it and then forgot about it.