WebSocket

web dev

A connection that starts as HTTP and then upgrades into a two-way channel that stays open.

It exists because the request-response shape cannot express a server that needs to speak first. The operational consequences are what surprise people: the connection is long-lived, so it holds resources on every proxy and firewall in the path and dies to their idle timeouts; it bypasses the per-request checks a gateway performs, because there is only one request; and it needs its own authorisation model, since the credential was checked once at the upgrade and the channel then carries anything.

Also known as: ws

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