[whatwg] WebSockets: UDP

[Erik Möller]

On Tue, 01 Jun 2010 18:45:51 +0200, Mike Belshe <mike at belshe.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 8:52 AM, John Tamplin <jat at google.com> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 11:34 AM, Mike Belshe <mike at belshe.com> wrote:
>>
>>> FYI:   SCTP is effectively non-deployable on the internet today due to
>>> NAT.
>>>
>>> +1 on finding ways to enable UDP.  It's a key missing component to the  
>>> web
>>> platform.
>>>
>>
>> But there is so much infrastructure that would have to be enabled to use
>> UDP from a web app.  How would proxies be handled?  Even if specs were
>> written and implementations available, how many years would it be before
>> corporate proxies/firewalls supported WebSocket over UDP?
>
>
> Agree - nobody said it would be trivial.  There are so many games
> successfully doing it today that it is clearly viable.  For games in
> particular, they have had to document to their users how to configure  
> their
> home routers, and that has been successful too.  If you talk with game
> writers - there are a class of games where UDP is just better (e.g. those
> communicating real-time, interactive position and other info).  If we can
> enable that through the web platform, that is good.
>
>
>>
>> I am all for finding a way to get datagram communication from a web app,
>> but I think it will take a long time and shouldn't hold up current  
>> WebSocket
>> work.
>>
>
> Agree-  no need to stall existing work.
>
> Mike
>
>
>>
>> --
>> John A. Tamplin
>> Software Engineer (GWT), Google
>>

I don't think proxies and firewalls are going to be a major problem, like  
Mike said, the myriad of UDP games out there seem to do just fine in the  
real world. Sure, there will be corporate firewalls and proxies blocking  
employees from fragging their colleagues when the boss is in a meeting,  
but I guess they're partly put there to prevent just that so we probably  
shouldn't try to combat it.
If we were talking about peer-to-peer UDP it'd be a whole new ballgame,  
but that's why I specifically said the use-case was for client/server  
games, I don't think we should attempt peer-to-peer before WebSockets is  
all done and shipped.

I fully agree any discussions on UDP (or other protocol) shouldn't stall  
the existing work, but right now there seems to be very little activity  
anyways.

-- 
Erik Möller
Core Developer
Opera Software