CODEWITHSUNDEEP
chatxmpp
Mickey Shine
Mickey Shine

Reputation: 12559

Which is better? Long TCP connection or long-polling?

I am planning to build a web chat on my site. I know two way of doing this: one is using XMPP web client (through flash, long TCP connection), and the other is facebook way， long-polling.

But facebook is going to update their chat to support Jabber (XMPP), so can some one tell what way is better? (including upgrading to XMPP)

Upvotes: 1

Views: 3933

Answers (2)

Benja
Benja

Reputation: 4154

They have different pros and cons, for eg: TCP requires a plugin (at least until HTML5 web sockets get widely supported), Long Polling is less performant, etc. I'm not an specialist on this differences, that's why I'll recomend you to avoid making this choice, avoid developing and tuning that each approach involves, avoid the future changes in available technologies (ie. as HTML5 arrival), using a library that abstracts the transport method used, and chooses the best approach based on client capabilities:

http://socket.io/

this wonderful library makes creating realtime apps amazingly simple! and there are various server-side implementations: Python (Tornado), Java, Google GO, Rack (Ruby), besides the mainstream implementation in Node.js (server-side JavaScript)

Upvotes: 0

Jeffrey Hantin
Jeffrey Hantin

Reputation: 36534

I've had pretty good results with long polling in my applications, but the bigger question is whether you're going to face the C10K problem. If so, structuring your code to deal with that kind of intense workload will likely dominate all other design considerations, at least in the short term. :-)

Other than server load, the primary consideration for which strategy to use will be client environment compatibility -- to be able to work from behind draconian firewalls that only allow HTTP or in browser environments that prohibit any plugins, long polling is the only way to survive, but it has more overhead than the simple TCP connection approach.

Upvotes: 2

Related Questions