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I am already using comet, what's the benefit of trying websockets first?

P.S. "It's not rocket science" snark completely uncalled for.

Well, WebSockets are somewhat more efficient in terms of overhead, the latency will probably be a little better, can be handled more efficiently/easier on the server-side and it doesn't have the other drawbacks Comet has (AFAIR in some browsers, say, opera, if you use comet, you've basically used up your quota of allowed connections, so making additional XHR might be problematic.)

> try websockets, if fails, use comet

I've seen this statement, or similar, a few times. But, Comet servers use WebSockets. So, WebSockets are not an alternative to Comet. They are a transport technology that is better suited to the Comet paradigm, and building interactive web apps, than HTTP (Long-Polling, Streaming). Here's a diagram I create a while back which hopefully explains my point of view: http://i.stack.imgur.com/BOFC2.png

Spot-on about the benefits of WebSockets over HTTP-based solutions when it comes to efficiency. The HTTP connection limit was a problem a while back but I don't believe it is any more.

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