About Kaazing WebSocket Gateway

This document contains the following sections:

What are HTML5 and WebSocket?

HTML5 is a revision to HTML designed to simplify life for web designers and developers. Part of that simplification comes from new communications libraries including the WebSocket API.

WebSocket is a full-duplex single socket connection over which messages can be sent between a client and a server. The WebSocket standard simplifies much of the complexity around bi-directional web communication and connection management.

For more information about HTML5, see the W3C HTML5 Specification. For more information about WebSocket, see the W3C WebSocket API Specification or websockets.org.

What is Kaazing WebSocket Gateway?

Kaazing WebSocket Gateway is an HTML5-compliant WebSocket server, with emulation to support today's pre-HTML5 browsers. The Gateway provides a bridge between WebSocket clients and your back-end systems, servers, and applications. This enables you to implement your own custom protocol or run an existing protocol over WebSocket.

The Gateway adds several features that go beyond the basic WebSocket specification:
  • Client libraries that provide the WebSockets API on modern desktop browsers, mobile browsers, and legacy browsers (even Microsoft Internet Exporer 6)
  • Support for both TCP (point to point) and UDP (broadcast) communications via WebSocket
  • Fallback mechanisms to keep the connection alive even through firewalls and proxies that may interfere with WebSocket communications
  • Load-balancing among multiple gateways
The Gateway provides a bridge between WebSocket clients and your back-end systems, servers, and applications
Figure: The Gateway provides a bridge between WebSocket clients and your back-end systems, servers, and applications

How Do I Use Kaazing WebSocket Gateway?

If you are an administrator or need to perform administration tasks, see:

If you are a developer who wants to use Kaazing WebSocket Gateway with your application, see:

Feedback?

Contact us at doc@kaazing.com or register for the Kaazing forums.

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