The difference between HTTP communication and socket communication

Socket connection and HTTP connection

Since the socket connection is usually a TCP connection, once the socket connection is established, the communication parties can start sending data content to each other until the two sides are disconnected. However, in real network applications, the client-to-server communication often needs to traverse multiple intermediary nodes, such as routers, gateways, firewalls, and so on, most firewalls will turn off long inactive connections and cause the Socket connection to be disconnected, so it needs to be polled to tell the network that the connection is active.

The HTTP connection uses a "request-response" approach, not only to establish a connection at the time of the request, but also to be able to reply to the server after the client has made a request to the server.

In many cases, the server side is required to proactively push data to the client, keeping the client and server data in real time and in sync. At this point, if the two sides established a socket connection, the server can directly transfer the data to the client, if the two sides establish an HTTP connection, the server needs to wait until the client sends a request before the data can be sent back to the client, so the client periodically sends a connection request to the server, not only to remain online, It also asks the server if there is any new data, and if so, it passes the data to the client.

The implementation of HTTP communication is based on the socket, the communication tool.

The difference between HTTP communication and socket communication