Web Sockets - Usage Scenarios

WebSockets provide a mechanism for fast, secure two-way communication between a client and a server over the web using HTTP(S).

WebSockets is a good choice over HTTP in usage scenarios where the following attributes are required-
* Fast Reaction Time
* Ongoing Updates
* Ad-hoc or “fire and forget” Messaging
* High-Frequency Messaging with Small Payloads

Some typical usage scenarios are:
* Location-based apps
* Collaborative editing/coding
* Financial tickers
* Sports updates - Football scores from the previous week’s game are highly cacheable because they are stable and unlikely to change, so HTTP would be a good fit. Football scores from a game in progress, however, are likely to change frequently. In that case, the resource is not highly cacheable, so a WebSocket becomes the better fit.
* Multimedia chat
* Multiplayer games
* Collaborative drawing on a digital communal chalkboard
* Clickstream data - to track user interactions on a website

A high level comparison of HTTP and WebSockets from the Windows Developer blog -

HTTP 2.0 connections could be used in place of a WebSocket depending on how they will be used as they have bi-directional messaging abilities, but they must follow the request/response pattern.

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