I have written an implementation of a websocket client and server for
testing my proposed protocol. Testing in the real world has provided me
some good information on what works and what doesn't, particularly in
regards to relaying through public anonymous proxies. Those wishing to
experiment with variations of the protocol or with particular services
may find these scripts useful.
http://www.warriorhut.org/whatwg/
The scripts connect to each other with a lightweight HTTP handshake then
asynchronously send a user-defined amount of data. The purpose is to see
how common HTTP proxies handle asynchronous connections (with client and
server sending simultaneously). These scripts are not an implementation
of the current draft spec, but an alternative proposal I raised earlier
due to what I see as major design flaws in the draft spec.
It should be noted that the spec outlined does not use the onmessage
interface proposed in the WHATWG draft spec, but rather a more standard
read() and write() as implemented by most other languages (ie,
websocket.read(512) returns up to 512 bytes of buffered data from the
socket). This will make porting traditional client code from other
languages much easier.
The underlying design principles behind this proposal are:
* Don't send author defined data (except for host) to any service that
has not yet identified itself as a websocket.
* Do not frame, encode or restrict any data sent after the websocket
upgrade. It should be possible at this point for any type of server to
take over the connection transparently.
* Do not require any headers not absolutely essential to creating a
connection. Let the client and server handle cookies, origin or
authentication as the author chooses.
* Do not hardcode port numbers, this is not really as secure or useful
as the spec authors seem to believe (port 81 is quite commonly used as a
webmail port for example).
I have not addressed TLS as this is difficult to program. In theory
though it should only require Upgrade: TLS in place of, or prior to, the
Upgrade: Websocket header.
Shannon
