[whatwg] WebSockets: what to do when there are too many open connections

[Boris Zbarsky]

On 5/13/10 7:55 PM, Perry Smith wrote:
> Its not that hard and it won't happen that often.  And it gives
> the javascript authors more control and choices.

If a situation doesn't happen often, then historically speaking most 
authors will have no provisions to handle it.  Try browsing the web with 
non-default colors set in your browser, with a default font size that's 
not 16px, or with a 13px minimum font size set.  These aren't exactly 
hard things to deal with, but authors just don't deal with them.  I 
sincerely doubt they'd deal with the possibility of a websocket not 
actually opening unless is was _very_ common.

Maybe the spec should say that attempts to open a websocket should have 
a 50% chance of failing even if there's no good reason for it, just so 
it is in fact common for opening to fail?  ;)  (No, that's not a 
completely serious proposal, but it's not completely facetious either; 
it would take something like that for authors to handle failure properly.)

-Boris