A survey on HTTP and WebSocket Protocols

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First-Third Department, First-Third University
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Abstract
No one will deny the way that the web has transformed into the
most commendable course to get to information in the web in both
business and individual life. HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol)
is the protocol to exchange or transfer hypertext which include the
link to the other document, images and video. HTTP is the basic
convention utilized by the World Wide Web. HTTP characterizes
how messages are transmitted, and what activities to be taken by
Web servers and browser for the particular request. HTTP provides
a convenient and stateless communication. The problem arises
when a real-time data exchange is needed. WebSocket is a
convention giving full-duplex correspondence. The objective of this
is to give a browser based applications that need two-way
correspondence with servers that does not depend on opening
various HTTP associations.
Keywords HTTP, WebSocket, TCP, two-waycommunication,
full duplex communication
I. INTRODUCTION
The Internet has been an irreplaceable piece of individuals' life in the
quickly developing data age. Individuals' prerequisites for the
Internet have changed from the Web 1.0 period to data co-operation
in the Web 2.0 time. The current moment between activity saw in an
expanding in number of e-trade frameworks, online shopping, and
news declare frameworks.
Essentially, the World Wide Web is an appropriated hypermedia
framework, in which data put away as website pages, sound, video,
plain content and hyperlinks which are connected to each other
utilizing web links. This property of web makes it important to have
a method for getting to remote data, and recovering data from the
web database.
This strategy for getting to remote data is the Hypertext Transfer
Protocol (HTTP), which is one of the key segments of the web. The
fundamental model is that of client/server architecture. The client
needs to retrieve data from the web and contacts a web server to do
accordingly.
Currently, the correspondence between client program and server
program depends on Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). HTTP is
an Application Layer tradition which is request-response based and
stateless convention.
A HTTP customer starts a request. It builds up a Transmission
Control Protocol (TCP) association. Subsequent to getting the
customer's request message, a server sends back a message as a
reaction and ends the association. Under this model, servers can not
send continuous information to customers.
Web offers the profitable technique for transmitting the information
between web browser and web servers. As the demand of real data,
teleconference, group communication increased which requires a two
way communication between the users. But the problem arises when
real data transfer between the users. The Web Socket offers the better
arrangement when contrasted with the traditional strategies that are
thought to be the great arrangement or conveying ongoing data.
Distinctive techniques that have been utilized over years are HTTP
Polling, HTTP Long polling and Comet. However the Web Socket
convention decreases Internet correspondence overhead and gives
effective, statefull correspondence between Web Servers and Clients.
WebSocket convention acquires ongoing correspondence web
programs to another level. The WebSocket convention gives full-
duplex, bidirectional correspondence channel that works through a
solitary attachment. Once the association is moved up to WebSocket,
messages can spill out of the server to the program the minute they
arrive.
 II. LITERATURE SURVEY
At present HTTP tradition is used by the web to interface with the
server. The request sent through HTTP tradition contains a lot of
overhead on transmission limit, especially in the occasion of
persistent data. Moreover it doesn't give the workplace of client and
server sending and getting data simultaneously [4].
In typical HTTP convention, first the client sends association asking
for server, the server acknowledges it and association is set up. After
correspondence the association is closed. For next correspondence
again the client needs to send separate request to the server. This
outcomes in pointless activity for building up the association over
and over. It likewise builds overhead [4].
HTTP and WebSocket is shown in the below circumstance. The
bidirectional correspondence between the client and the server is
required. This prompts an issues that different associations are to be
utilized by the server, particularly one for sending and other for
accepting information.
Figure 1: HTTP association versus WebSocket association.
The solution for these issues will be utilizing a single TCP
association. This provision is given by WebSocket convention.
WebSocket is consolidated with API. WebSocket can go about as a
substitute to HTTP polling. This development can be used for
collection of application. The figure 1 demonstrates the HTTP and
WebSocket association. As HTTP uses http or https relationship over
TCP for web, the WebSocket tradition uses ws or wss for web.
To utilize HTML5 [3] Web Socket to interface one web customer
with another remote end-point, another Web Socket should be
presented with a considerable URL that identifies with the remote
endpoint to be associated.
Web Socket characterizes ws:// and wss:// arrangement as Web
Socket and secure Web Socket association independently. A Web
Socket association is built up while updating a HTTP protocol to
Web Socket convention during the handshake between the client and
server.
Polling versus WebSocket
HTTP polling [6] consists of a sequence of request response
messages. The client sends request-response messages. The client
sends a request to a server. Upon receiving this request, the server
responds with a new message, if there is any message to send or
returns the empty response if no new message is available for client.
After a small interval say , called as polling interval the server is
polled again by client to see if any new messages are available.
Various applications like chat rooms, games use HTTP polling.
HTTP Long Polling, One weakness associated with polling is the
number of unnecessary requests made to the server when it has no
new messages for a client. Long polling emerged as a variation on
the polling technique that efficiently handles the information push
from servers to clients.
With the long polling, the server doesnt send an empty response
immediately after realizing that no new messages are available for a
client. Instead, the server holds the request until a new message is
available or a timeout expires. This reduces the number of client
requests when no new messages are available.
WebSocket [6], with continuous polling, an application must repeat
HTTP headers in each request from the client and each response
from the server. The WebSocket protocol provides full-duplex,
bidirectional communication channel that operates through a single
socket over the web and can help build scalable real time Web
application.
Once the connection is upgraded to WebSocket, messages can flow
from the server to the browser the moment they arrive. The figure 2
shows the Latency comparison between the polling and WebSocket
applications.
 III. ARCHITECTURE

Design is a step by step procedure for constructing an overall system.

Security algorithms are used to encrypt the user data. User can
upload or download the files, images and pdf documents. The
documents are encrypted using an encryption algorithm. The
documents encrypted while uploading so that the unauthorized user
cant access user data. The documents are decrypted while
downloading from a specified location.

SSLSecure Socket Layer gives a protected transport association

between applications (e.g., a web server and a program) SSL was
produced by Netscape SSL variant 3.0 has been executed in
numerous web programs (e.g., Netscape Navigator and MS Internet
Explorer) and web servers and broadly utilized on the Internet SSL
v3.0 was indicated in an Internet Draft (1996) it advanced into RFC
2246 and was renamed to TLS (Transport Layer Security) TLS can
be seen as SSL v3.1.
Figure 2: comparison between the HTTP polling and WebSocket
applications

Transport layer protocol

The web relies on two transport layer traditions, the User Datagram
Protocol (UDP) and the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP). Both,
the TCP and UDP are network layer service provided by the internet
protocol (IP).

TCP [5] is a reliable transmission convention. The data is buffered

byte by byte in segments and transmitted by timekeepers. This
stream guarantee the consistency of the information. TCP is said to
be a stream oriented due to the way that the data is sent in various
segment.

UDP [5] is untrusted yet quick. The convention offers no guaranty

the information will be conveyed in its integrality and nor copied by
the other users. UDP is unreliable but fast. The protocol offers no
guaranty the data will be delivered in its integrality nor duplicated. It
works best with no flow control mechanism. Each fragments are
received independently. UDP is a message-oriented convention.

WebSocket [5] is built over TCP because of its reliability. Browser Figure 3: SSL handshake protocol
enabled games are the perfect example of WebSocket use cases.
The WebSocket convention was to be discharged in an officially
They require low latency and have a high rate of update. To achieve
existing web foundation. Before a WebSocket correspondence can
low latency, the communication protocol must make sure not to drop
begin, a HTTP association must be started. The program sends an
any packets. Otherwise, the exchange takes two times longer.
Upgrade header to the server to instruct him user needs to begin a
WebSocket association. Changing from the HTTP convention to the
WebSocket convention is suggested as a handshake. The figure 3
demonstrates the SSL handshake convention.
Handshaking is like that of HTTP convention. HTTP convention of
handshake give both WebSocket and HTTP on the same port. After
the handshake the further process is unique in relation to unique
HTTP convention. After the foundation of appropriate association,
the WebSocket content and information can be sent at once i.e. in full
duplex mode.
Essentially, HTTP is a TCP/IP based correspondence convention,
which is utilized to convey information for example, HTML
documents, picture records, inquiry results and so forth over the
Web. This gives a way to approach with PCs to associates with each
other.
HTTP specification specifies how clients request data will be sent to
the server, and how servers respond to these requests. Following
figure 4 shows a very basic architecture of a web application and
depicts where HTTP sits.
Figure 4: The HTTP architecture
The HTTP convention is a request/response convention. HTTP
convention is similar to client/server based architecture. Here web
program, robots and web search tools, and so forth act like HTTP
client and Web server goes about as server.
Client - The HTTP client sends a request to the server. The client
request includes a request method, URI, and protocol version. This is
followed by a MIME-like message containing request modifiers,
client data, and body content over a TCP/IP association.
Server - The HTTP server responds with a status line. This including
the message's protocol version and a success or error code. This is
followed by a MIME-like message containing server data, meta
information, and entity-body content.
Web Socket, is another element of HTML5, this is characterized as
an innovation that empowers web site pages to utilize the Web
Socket convention for full-duplex correspondence with a remote
host. It presents the Web Socket interface and characterizes a full-
duplex correspondence channel that works through a solitary socket
over the Web. The figure 5 demonstrates a WebSocket architecture.
Figure 5: The WebSocket architecture
HTML5 Web Socket proficiently gives a socket association to web
with negligible overhead. It conveys a huge decrease in traffic and
latency contrasted with Ajax, polling and Comet arrangements that
are regularly used to transmit continuous data for full-duplex
correspondence by keeping up two HTTP associations. Along these
lines, it is the perfect innovation for building versatile, constant web
correspondence framework.
IV. EXPERIMETAL ANALYSIS
In order to communicate multimedia data of one gigabyte, when
polling method is used, with ten persons access the multimedia data
then the header data size is 10,000 bytes. If 100 people access the
multimedia data of one gigabyte then the header data size will be
increase to 100,000 bytes. The WebSocket system have the header
size of 1,000 bytes. For the transformation of multimedia data of one
gigabyte header is not required because the size of the data is
negligible with respect to WebSocket. On the other hand, with the
WebSocket, the additional overhead does not occur. These extra
header information create the overhead for a large number of clients
on the system. The Figure 6, shown below predicts the overhead
produced by the polling and WebSocket technique [8].
 techniques. WebSocket is an ultimate means for improving
performance and by removing the HTTP header overhead.

REFERENCES

[1] Network Performance Effects of HTTP/1.1, CSS1, and PNG

Henrik Frystyk Nielsen , James Gettys and Anselm Baird-Smith
World Wide Web Consortium.

[2] kaazing websocket gateway detailed technical overview June

Figure 6: Examination of the overhead produced by the polling and
WebSocket technique
In the polling method [8], from the clients request, the time of 60ms
is consumed, the time while waiting for response, and if the response
arrives after the connection timeout, all these become overhead.
However, with the WebSocket system, associations that occur after
the first connection, the connection is being maintained for the
further request and response. Figure 7 is a graph comparing the
response times the polling and WebSocket methods. The x-axis, is
the number of requests, and the y-axis shows the response time (ms).
2010
[3] Research of Web Real-Time Communication Based on Web
Socket Qigang Liu, Xiangyang Sun, October 2012.
[4] Video Streaming Over Full Duplex Network Using Websocket
and Its Performance Evaluation Nikita Kulkarni , Tarik Eltaieb,
Journal of Multidisciplinary Engineering Science and Technology
ISSN: 3159-0040 Vol. 2 Issue 4, April 2015.
[5] HTML5 WebSocket protocol and its application to distributed
computing Gabriel L. Muller Cran_eld University, 2014.
[6] Real Time Data Communication over Full Duplex Network
Using Websocket Shruti M. Rakhunde1 International Conference on
Advances in Engineering & Technology 2014

[7] http://engineering.circle.com/https-authorized-certs-with-node-js/

[8] Research and Performance Analysis of HTML5 WebSocket for a

Real-time Multimedia Data Communication Environment. Jin-tae
Park1, Hyun-seo Hwang, Jun-soo Yun, Il-young Moon, School of
Computer Science and Engineering, Kor-ea University of
Technology and Education, ISSN: 2287-1233 2014 Vol.46
(Multimedia 2014).
Figure 6: Examination of the reaction time of the WebSocket and
polling technique

V. CONCLUSION
HTTP is a unidirectional protocol. HTTP permits the request
message to go from the client to the server and then the server sends
a response message to the client. Web Socket is a bi-directional
convention, it doesn't have predefined message patterns such as
request/response. Either client can send message to server or server
can send message to client. Web Socket permits both the client and
server communicate simultaneously and independently. Another TCP
connection should be set up for new HTTP communication. For Web
Socket, the HTTP association is updated by utilizing standard HTTP