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Before Bridge, your two options were: 1. Pay per message at Pusher/UrbanAirship to use their internal systems optimized for messaging. 2. Do it for free writi
by jiggity 14y ago
Before Bridge, your two options were:
1. Pay per message at Pusher/UrbanAirship to use their internal systems optimized for messaging.
2. Do it for free writing your own messaging stack using some combination of Node.js / Socket.io / RabbitMQ / ZeroMQ / etc.
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I liken it either getting fully a written TCP/IP socket client and paying per connection (crazy!) or writing in your own bitstream and ensuring protocol compliance (also crazy! -- easy to get wrong, takes globs of time away from the actual app you want to write).
Using the base level protocol with RabbitMQ / ZeroMQ requires a great deal of design to even achieve something barely production-ready.
What the folks here did was use their expert industry messaging knowledge and wrote a messaging protocol that takes care of all edge cases, protocol peculiarities, performance refinements.
The result is a beautifully crafted work of art that provides hyper efficient messaging.
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The part that sold me completely was the fact that these guys don't charge per message. Better than that, YOU get to control your own server. You handle uptimes, downtimes, and all things that come with owning your server. You don't get locked in.
The tradeoff of complexity + price + handholding goes as follows:
- Pusher / UrbanAirship (Charge per message)
- Bridge (Charge per core you run)
- Write your own Node.js / Socket.io / RabbitMQ, ZeroMQ system (Free)
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I've been using Bridge's predecessor (Nowjs) for about 9 months now and I can unabashedly say I love Darshan and his team. Countless times they gave me invaluable advice for setting up a real time messaging system and ways to optimize it.
If you decide to use Bridge, rest assured, you will be in good hands.
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TLDR: This new service is magic. If you don't want to be charged per message and want full control over your messaging node, Bridge is at the cutting edge of cost structure + technology.