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A decent number of corporate firewalls still don't support web sockets... That means if you build something that requires web sockets, prepare to have a deluge
by londons_explore 3y ago
A decent number of corporate firewalls still don't support web sockets...
That means if you build something that requires web sockets, prepare to have a deluge of support/refund requests from the most valuable clients who think your site is broken.
I suggest just having a once-per-second polling fallback, perhaps with an info bar saying 'the network you are connected to is degrading your experience'.
- cpursley 3y agoCertainty this can’t be true? I believe you but do you have any actual examples?
- londons_explore 3y agoAll UK government offices doesn't seem to allow it... That's a couple of million potential users right away.
- HackerThemAll 3y agoJust use SignalR. It'll automatically choose whatever comes through.
- paddybyers 3y agoYes it's true. At Ably we support websockets, SSE and comet fallbacks (simple long-polling and streamed long-polling). It's less and less common but there are firewalls that fail to handle websockets correctly, or simply block them. I can't name specific companies/examples, but call centers are one example - the network and desktop environments are fully locked down. We also see in these cases that streamed HTTP can also be broken by the firewall - for example a chunked response can be held back by the firewall and only forwarded to the client when the request ends, as a fixed-length response. Obviously that breaks SSE and means you can't just use streamed comet as a fallback when websockets don't work.
- cpursley 3y agoWild, thanks!
- nchmy 3y agoThis is all addressed in the article