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• Long-lived connections in a serverless world

  Feb 15, 2019 • posted by justin • filed under api, faas, fanout, grip, protocols, realtime, websockets

  In serverless architectures, application logic is often powered by short-lived execution environments. But what does this mean for long-lived connections? After all, many applications today depend on persistent WebSocket or SSE connections in order to exchange data in realtime.

  

  The answer is unsurprising: either the execution limitations must be tolerated, or long-lived connections must be handled by a separate component. We’ll go over these approaches below.

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• Goodbye, XMPP

  May 18, 2018 • posted by justin • filed under api, fanout, protocols, realtime, xmpp

  Today we removed support for XMPP in Fanout Cloud.

  Fanout’s XMPP functionality simply didn’t garner the adoption we were hoping for. It was never used at scale, and was mainly relegated to chat bots that needed compatibility with Google Talk. However, as Google phased out XMPP federation, such usefulness dwindled.

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• Push and reliability

  Jan 2, 2017 • posted by justin • filed under api, protocols

  In push architectures, one of the main challenges is delivering data reliably to receivers. There are many reasons for this:

  • Most push architectures (including those developed by our company) use the publish-subscribe messaging pattern, which is unreliable.
  • TCP’s built-in reliability is not enough to ensure delivery, as modern network sessions span multiple connections.
  • Receivers can’t tell the difference between data loss and intentional silence.
  • There is no one size fits all answer.

  The last point trips up developers new to this problem space, who may wish for push systems to provide “guaranteed delivery.” If only it were that simple. Like many challenges in computer science, there isn’t a best answer, just trade-offs you are willing to accept.

  Below we’ll go over the various issues and recommended practices around reliable push.

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• Bayeux / Faye compatibility

  Jan 21, 2015 • posted by justin • filed under fanout, protocols

  Bayeux is one of the few standard protocols for publish-subscribe messaging on the web. Today we announce Bayeux compatibility in the Fanout Cloud realtime push service. When you publish JSON objects through our service, they can be received by any Bayeux-compatible client library, such as Faye.

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• You might not need a WebSocket

  Jun 24, 2014 • posted by justin • filed under protocols, websockets

  Before I begin, I want to say that WebSockets are great. I’ve even implemented RFC 6455 myself in Zurl and Pushpin, which are used by Fanout Cloud.

  However, after spending quite some time working on large distributed applications and gaining a greater appreciation of REST and messaging patterns, I feel that much of what typical web applications want to accomplish with WebSockets (or with socket-like abstractions) is perhaps better solved by other means.

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• Publishing JSON over XMPP

  Oct 9, 2013 • posted by justin • filed under fanout, protocols, xmpp

  At Fanout, we’ve developed a powerful publish-subscribe system for fronting custom APIs. Sometimes, though, API design is too much to think about and all you want to do is push some JSON.

  To address this need, we initially created our own proprietary JSON-publishing protocol (a.k.a. “FPP”) and corresponding client library. This made it possible for developers to implement realtime updates in just a few lines of code, transported by magic. While this system worked well enough, it wasn’t terribly satisfying to have invented yet-another-protocol in order to accomplish this. Sure, every other pubsub cloud service has done the same thing, but the status quo makes for a bunch of redundant efforts that all achieve more-or-less the same result, and it hampers interoperability. So, lately, we’ve been looking into how we could adapt an existing standard for pushing JSON.

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• Long-polling doesn’t totally suck

  Mar 4, 2013 • posted by justin • filed under api, protocols

  With all the interest in WebSockets lately, it would be easy to write off HTTP long-polling as a less capable, legacy mechanism. The truth is that long-polling is completely sufficient for today’s modern web applications, and additionally it enjoys many benefits not found in WebSockets or other mechanisms. Here’s why you might want to implement HTTP long-polling on purpose in the present day:

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• HTTP GRIP and the Proxy-and-Hold technique

  Feb 10, 2013 • posted by justin • filed under api, fanout, grip, protocols

  UPDATE: The official GRIP specification now lives here and is more up to date.

  Fanout’s ability to power any realtime HTTP API is based on what I call the proxy-and-hold technique. With this technique, an edge server handling HTTP or WebSocket connections for realtime purposes need not be concerned with the inner workings of the web application that it fronts. This keeps edge nodes dumb and generalized, allowing for straightforward scaling and also the possibility of sharing the nodes across multiple applications and services. To help explain how the technique works and why I believe it is an ideal way to develop any realtime HTTP application, I’ll walk us through my original thought process:

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• Using the API via XMPP

  Jan 12, 2013 • posted by justin • filed under api, fanout, protocols, xmpp

  As you may know, Fanout Cloud supports delivering data to both HTTP and XMPP clients/endpoints. What you may not know is that the Fanout Cloud API itself is accessible via both protocols, too. This means that not only can you publish messages or make configuration changes via REST, you can perform these same tasks by sending XMPP stanzas. Why would you want to do this? Well, in certain cases, XMPP may be a more convenient or more optimal way of accessing the Fanout Cloud API. Additionally, the fact that you can use the API via one protocol but publish data to an endpoint of the opposite protocol allows for crossover possibilities. For example, you can use the REST API to fire off XMPP stanzas, or use XMPP ad-hoc commands to stream data to HTTP clients.

  

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• Standards at the edge

  Oct 17, 2012 • posted by justin • filed under protocols, xmpp

  As I’ve been a long-time contributor to XMPP, people who know me are generally surprised to discover that Fanout Cloud is not in some way centrally powered by an XMPP server. XMPP is often touted as a solution for realtime communication among servers in a cluster. While this suggestion is not necessarily unsubstantiated, and many services operate this way today, the reality is that many applications have greater needs when it comes to messaging than your typical XMPP software stack provides. I’m talking about real queuing patterns, such as worker balancing, reliability, flow control, “job” queues, etc.

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• Realtime multicasting over HTTP/XMPP

  Sep 3, 2012 • posted by justin • filed under api, fanout, protocols, xmpp

  Push is hard. Often, implementing realtime push in a website or web service means having to use unfamiliar software or frameworks. If it isn’t an XMPP server with BOSH, then it’s an esoteric HTTP server framework like Node.js or Tornado. Further, while the knowledge and tools necessary for load balancing a traditional web service are commonly found these days, scaling out and operating a push architecture is less straightforward. The interactions between server nodes are different. The traffic patterns are different. Even if you’ve got a handle on whatever particular approach for push you’re using today, do you know how you’ll scale it tomorrow?

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