3 ms·

> the Matrix protocol is even worse Could you please elaborate on this?

• Arathorn 9y ago
  I can't speak for kuschku, but the normal complaint is that every message you send in Matrix is a new HTTP hit, and every batch if messages you receive is a new HTTP hit - and this (combined with the message format being JSON) is less bandwidth and roundtrip efficient than a dedicated TCP line protocol like IRC. And this is true, in the default baseline protocol. It makes it absolutely trivial to send and receice messages; you can just fire up curl to do an http PUT to speak or GET to receive. However, Matrix does let folks define more efficient optional transports, but in practice (other than a websockets+JSON proposal), nobody has bothered. It seems that for most purposes HTTP+JSON is fine; after all the whole web revolves around it, plus you don't need to worry about timeouts on a single tcp socket etc. And with HTTP/2 most of the concerns go away anyway, as the overhead of new requests is fairly minimal (same socket; header compression; etc). On mobile devices a better transport would be desirable for reduced battery and bandwidth consumption, and I'm sure we'll eventually see one. But for now HTTP is perfectly serviceable, if not the most efficient solution.