Subject: [hybi] considerations on strawpoll GET vs OPTIONS vs new Method

From: Salvatore Loreto <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2011 11:00:04 +0100

Hi there,

Joe and I, as chairs, haven't seen emerging any significant consensus 
from this straw-poll;
so we suggest to move forward with no change of method for the upcoming 
05 version,
keeping GET as method for the handshake,
as its behavior in the WebSocket handshake has been largely tested in 
the field
and it is now well know for better and worse.

However we want make clear that the choice of method can change, in a 
next version,
once we have a more clear evidence of the fact that a different method
(e.g. OPTIONS or a brand new one) has a better success rate and less 
side effect that GET

Folks interested to promote a different method are invited to work (in 
parallel) on experimenting
and collecting data to share within the HyBi community.
At moment we don't have any real data to evaluate the success rate of 
OPTIONS as well as
its actual behavior as method for the handshake while interacting with 
the deployed intermediaries;
moreover the discussion triggered by the strawpoll has let emerge some 
side effects that folks
had not thought before.

With respect to defining a completely new method (e.g. WEBSOCKET),
including all of the implied semantics, we would need to coordinate with
(or delegate to) HTTPbis for the necessary expertise, particularly 
considering the
potential for unexpected behavior from the intermediaries that are 
having problems
with the existing methods.

Those interested in working in parallel on defining a new method are 
invited to produce
new I-Ds to describe their ideas;
those I-Ds should provide analysis of how the method is likely to deploy 
in the wild.

cheers
Sal

-- 
Salvatore Loreto
www.sloreto.com