One of the very real issues with WebSockets is that they don't work often over mobile networks, with invisible proxying, etc.
Unless you go with something like Socket.IO, WebSockets alone would never be a viable solution.
Unless you go with something like Socket.IO, WebSockets alone would never be a viable solution.
In the same way that a WebSocket library can fallback from a WebSocket connection to a HTTP-based connection it can also first try ws:// and then fallback to wss:// - it's what our library does. The potential problem here of course is that you need an SSL certificate. When using Pusher that's not a problem, because we've bought one, but when using your own hosted solution that might mean dishing out money that you'd rather not.