
Comet is Always Better Than Polling - danw
http://cometdaily.com/2007/11/06/comet-is-always-better-than-polling/
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tlrobinson
"Always" is a dangerous word. I'd argue that polling is better for simple
applications where latency and scalability aren't an issue. "Comet" adds a
layer of complexity where it might not be necessary. Premature optimization...
you know the rest.

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zemaj
Indeed.

Comet is only better if you have an app that sends significantly more data to
users than it receives. If you're constantly sending data to the server, or
only send responses based on user input, then comet is the wrong choice.

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reitzensteinm
Comet is better than polling only if the benefits outweigh the opportunity
cost. For almost all situations, the greatest upside is improving user
experience.

Is Comet the best thing you can do, right now, to improve your user
experience? If so, great! But I highly doubt that.

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far33d
is comet going to become the ron paul of newsyc?

~~~
andyn
From their last one:

> Since that interview, Comet Daily has started publishing an article every
> day. This is a great step forward. Now we need to post every relevant
> article to Hacker News, Programming Reddit, Slashdot, and any other news
> site where emerging technologies can gain high exposure.

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run4yourlives
Sorry, but even with the graphs, I'm not seeing how 1000 users continuously
connected for an hour doesn't translate into a lot more server load that 1000
users polling for an hour every 10 seconds or so.

The math just doesn't add up in my head...

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gojomo
It requires negligible (no?) traffic to keep a TCP socket 'continuously
connected' when data is not being sent. (The only resource cost is the state
at both endpoints remembering the socket exists.) OTOH, every 'poll' involves
a lot of socket and HTTP request/response overhead traffic -- even if there's
no update necessary.

Still, this article overclaims the comet case. Polling is often easier to
understand/implement/debug. It requires less server-side state and may be less
likely to hit practical server-side implementation limits.

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danw
I've always heard of comet explained in terms of building chat clients and the
like but I think it's mains application is to make AJAX polling redundant

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Novash
I never heard of comet before. Well, I heard of it yesterday. So about you
people advocating it give us some starters?

