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

[Perry Smith]

On May 13, 2010, at 9:00 PM, Boris Zbarsky wrote:

> 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.)

That wasn't what I meant.  "it won't happen often" I meant, the need to have a queueing mechanism written in Javascript.  i.e. most applications of web sockets would want to just fail.  The few that do not, can roll their own.