

Ask HN: How to use HTML5 websockets with HTTP reverse proxies? - roschdal

I usually use a reverse proxy, such as Varnish or Nginx, to cache and gzip HTTP requests when developing HTML5 Web Apps.<p>Now, I'd like to implement HTML5 WebSockets support in some of my apps. However, it seems that neither Varnish nor Nginx support WebSockets. So how can I realistically use HTML5 WebSockets, if no HTTP proxies support it? Is there a workaround? I have submitted bugreports to both the Varnish and nginx projects, which have been mostly ignored so far.<p>This seems like a showstopper for HTML5 Web Sockets, in my opinion.
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koen
I agree, the reverse proxies are becoming a bottle neck. Perhaps we need to
team up and contribute it to nginx? It shouldn't be very hard unless their
architecture really does not do persistent connections at all (they currently
use HTTP 1.0 for requests to a backend) ... Do you have any experience with
varnish ?

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wmf
I guess the short-term solution is to connect to a different port.

HAProxy developer Willy Tarreau is participating in the IETF HyBi list, so I
would expect HAProxy to add WebSocket support.

