HyBi Working Group                                              I. Fette
Internet-Draft                                              Google, Inc.
Intended status: Standards Track                       February 25, 2011
Expires: August 29, 2011


                         The WebSocket protocol
                draft-ietf-hybi-thewebsocketprotocol-06

Abstract

   The WebSocket protocol enables two-way communication between a user
   agent running untrusted code running in a controlled environment to a
   remote host that has opted-in to communications from that code.  The
   security model used for this is the Origin-based security model
   commonly used by Web browsers.  The protocol consists of an initial
   handshake followed by basic message framing, layered over TCP.  The
   goal of this technology is to provide a mechanism for browser-based
   applications that need two-way communication with servers that does
   not rely on opening multiple HTTP connections (e.g. using
   XMLHttpRequest or <iframe>s and long polling).

   Please send feedback to the hybi@ietf.org mailing list.

Status of this Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
   Task Force (IETF).  Note that other groups may also distribute
   working documents as Internet-Drafts.  The list of current Internet-
   Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.

   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
   and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
   time.  It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
   material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

   This Internet-Draft will expire on August 29, 2011.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2011 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents



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   (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
   publication of this document.  Please review these documents
   carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
   to this document.  Code Components extracted from this document must
   include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
   described in the Simplified BSD License.


Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
     1.1.  Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
     1.2.  Protocol overview  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
     1.3.  Opening handshake  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
     1.4.  Closing handshake  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
     1.5.  Design philosophy  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
     1.6.  Security model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
     1.7.  Relationship to TCP and HTTP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
     1.8.  Establishing a connection  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
     1.9.  Subprotocols using the WebSocket protocol  . . . . . . . . 11
   2.  Conformance requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
     2.1.  Terminology  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
   3.  WebSocket URIs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
     3.1.  Parsing WebSocket URIs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
     3.2.  Constructing WebSocket URIs  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
     3.3.  Valid WebSocket URIs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
   4.  Data Framing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
     4.1.  Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
     4.2.  Client-to-Server Masking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
     4.3.  Base Framing Protocol  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
     4.4.  Fragmentation  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
     4.5.  Control Frames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
       4.5.1.  Close  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
       4.5.2.  Ping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
       4.5.3.  Pong . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
     4.6.  Data Frames  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
     4.7.  Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
     4.8.  Extensibility  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
   5.  Opening Handshake  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
     5.1.  Client Requirements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
     5.2.  Server-side requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
       5.2.1.  Reading the client's opening handshake . . . . . . . . 29
       5.2.2.  Sending the server's opening handshake . . . . . . . . 29
   6.  Error Handling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
     6.1.  Handling errors in UTF-8 from the server . . . . . . . . . 32
     6.2.  Handling errors in UTF-8 from the client . . . . . . . . . 32
   7.  Closing the connection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33



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     7.1.  Definitions  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
       7.1.1.  Close the WebSocket Connection . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
       7.1.2.  Start the WebSocket Closing Handshake  . . . . . . . . 33
       7.1.3.  The WebSocket Connection Is Closed . . . . . . . . . . 33
       7.1.4.  Fail the WebSocket Connection  . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
     7.2.  Abnormal closures  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
       7.2.1.  Client-initiated closure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
       7.2.2.  Server-initiated closure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
     7.3.  Normal closure of connections  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
     7.4.  Status codes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
       7.4.1.  Defined Status Codes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
       7.4.2.  Reserved status code ranges  . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
   8.  Extensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
     8.1.  Negotiating extensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
     8.2.  Known extensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
       8.2.1.  Compression  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
   9.  Security considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
   10. IANA considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
     10.1. Registration of ws: scheme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
     10.2. Registration of wss: scheme  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
     10.3. Registration of the "WebSocket" HTTP Upgrade keyword . . . 44
     10.4. Sec-WebSocket-Key  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
     10.5. Sec-WebSocket-Extensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
     10.6. Sec-WebSocket-Accept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
     10.7. Sec-WebSocket-Origin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
     10.8. Sec-WebSocket-Protocol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
     10.9. Sec-WebSocket-Version  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
   11. Using the WebSocket protocol from other specifications . . . . 49
   12. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
   13. Appendix: List of Changes  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
     13.1. Changes from -05 to -06  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
   14. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
   Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55


















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1.  Introduction

1.1.  Background

   _This section is non-normative._

   Historically, creating an instant messenger chat client as a Web
   application has required an abuse of HTTP to poll the server for
   updates while sending upstream notifications as distinct HTTP calls.

   This results in a variety of problems:

   o  The server is forced to use a number of different underlying TCP
      connections for each client: one for sending information to the
      client, and a new one for each incoming message.

   o  The wire protocol has a high overhead, with each client-to-server
      message having an HTTP header.

   o  The client-side script is forced to maintain a mapping from the
      outgoing connections to the incoming connection to track replies.

   A simpler solution would be to use a single TCP connection for
   traffic in both directions.  This is what the WebSocket protocol
   provides.  Combined with the WebSocket API, it provides an
   alternative to HTTP polling for two-way communication from a Web page
   to a remote server.  [WSAPI]

   The same technique can be used for a variety of Web applications:
   games, stock tickers, multiuser applications with simultaneous
   editing, user interfaces exposing server-side services in real time,
   etc.

1.2.  Protocol overview

   _This section is non-normative._

   The protocol has two parts: a handshake, and then the data transfer.

   The handshake from the client looks as follows:

        GET /chat HTTP/1.1
        Host: server.example.com
        Upgrade: websocket
        Connection: Upgrade
        Sec-WebSocket-Key: dGhlIHNhbXBsZSBub25jZQ==
        Sec-WebSocket-Origin: http://example.com
        Sec-WebSocket-Protocol: chat, superchat



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        Sec-WebSocket-Version: 6

   The handshake from the server looks as follows:

        HTTP/1.1 101 Switching Protocols
        Upgrade: websocket
        Connection: Upgrade
        Sec-WebSocket-Accept: s3pPLMBiTxaQ9kYGzzhZRbK+xOo=
        Sec-WebSocket-Protocol: chat

   The leading line from the client follows the Request-Line format.
   The leading line from the server follows the Status-Line format.  The
   Request-Line and Status-Line productions are defined in [RFC2616].

   After the leading line in both cases come an unordered set of
   headers.  The meaning of these headers is specified in Section 5 of
   this document.  Additional headers may also be present, such as
   cookies required to identify the user.  The format and parsing of
   headers is as defined in [RFC2616].


   Once the client and server have both sent their handshakes, and if
   the handshake was successful, then the data transfer part starts.
   This is a two-way communication channel where each side can,
   independently from the other, send data at will.

   Clients and servers, after a successful handshake, transfer data back
   and forth in conceptual units referred to in this specification as
   "messages".  A message is a complete unit of data at an application
   level, with the expectation that many or most applications
   implementing this protocol (such as web user agents) provide APIs in
   terms of sending and receiving messages.  The websocket message does
   not necessarily correspond to a particular network layer framing, as
   a fragmented message may be coalesced, or vice versa, e.g. by an
   intermediary.

   Data is sent on the wire in the form of frames that have an
   associated type.  Broadly speaking, there are types for textual data,
   which is interpreted as UTF-8 text, binary data (whose interpretation
   is left up to the application), and control frames, which are not
   intended to carry data for the application, but instead for protocol-
   level signaling, such as to signal that the connection should be
   closed.  This version of the protocol defines six frame types and
   leaves ten reserved for future use.

   The WebSocket protocol uses this framing so that specifications that
   use the WebSocket protocol can expose such connections using an
   event-based mechanism instead of requiring users of those



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   specifications to implement buffering and piecing together of
   messages manually.

1.3.  Opening handshake

   _This section is non-normative._

   The opening handshake is intended to be compatible with HTTP-based
   server-side software and intermediaries, so that a single port can be
   used by both HTTP clients talking to that server and WebSocket
   clients talking to that server.  To this end, the WebSocket client's
   handshake is an HTTP Upgrade request:

        GET /chat HTTP/1.1
        Host: server.example.com
        Upgrade: websocket
        Connection: Upgrade
        Sec-WebSocket-Key: dGhlIHNhbXBsZSBub25jZQ==
        Sec-WebSocket-Origin: http://example.com
        Sec-WebSocket-Protocol: chat, superchat
        Sec-WebSocket-Version: 6

   Headers in the handshake are sent by the client in a random order;
   the order is not meaningful.

   Additional headers are used to select options in the WebSocket
   protocol.  Options available in this version are the subprotocol
   selector, |Sec-WebSocket-Protocol|, and |Cookie|, which can used for
   sending cookies to the server (e.g. as an authentication mechanism).
   The |Sec-WebSocket-Protocol| request-header field can be used to
   indicate what subprotocols (application-level protocols layered over
   the WebSocket protocol) are acceptable to the client.  The server
   selects one of the acceptable protocols and echoes that value in its
   handshake to indicate that it has selected that protocol.
        Sec-WebSocket-Protocol: chat

   The "Request-URI" of the GET method [RFC2616] is used to identify the
   endpoint of the WebSocket connection, both to allow multiple domains
   to be served from one IP address and to allow multiple WebSocket
   endpoints to be served by a single server.


   The client includes the hostname in the Host header of its handshake
   as per [RFC2616], so that both the client and the server can verify
   that they agree on which host is in use.

   The |Sec-WebSocket-Origin| header is used to protect against
   unauthorized cross-origin use of a WebSocket server by scripts using



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   the |WebSocket| API in a Web browser.  The server is informed of the
   script origin generating the WebSocket connection request.  If the
   server does not wish to accept connections from this origin, it can
   choose to abort the connection.  This header is sent by browser
   clients, for non-browser clients this header may be sent if it makes
   sense in the context of those clients.

   Finally, the server has to prove to the client that it received the
   client's WebSocket handshake, so that the server doesn't accept
   connections that are not WebSocket connections.  This prevents an
   attacker from tricking a WebSocket server by sending it carefully-
   crafted packets using |XMLHttpRequest| or a |form| submission.

   To prove that the handshake was received, the server has to take two
   pieces of information and combine them to form a response.  The first
   piece of information comes from the |Sec-WebSocket-Key| header in the
   client handshake:

        Sec-WebSocket-Key: dGhlIHNhbXBsZSBub25jZQ==

   For this header, the server has to take the value (as present in the
   header, e.g. the base64-encoded version), and concatenate this with
   the GUID "258EAFA5-E914-47DA-95CA-C5AB0DC85B11" in string form, which
   is unlikely to be used by network endpoints that do not understand
   the WebSocket protocol.  A SHA-1 hash, base64-encoded, of this
   concatenation is then returned in the server's handshake
   [FIPS.180-2.2002].

   Concretely, if as in the example above, header |Sec-WebSocket-Key|
   had the value "dGhlIHNhbXBsZSBub25jZQ==", the server would
   concatenate the string "258EAFA5-E914-47DA-95CA-C5AB0DC85B11" to form
   the string "dGhlIHNhbXBsZSBub25jZQ==258EAFA5-E914-47DA-95CA-
   C5AB0DC85B11".  The server would then take the SHA-1 hash of this,
   giving the value 0xb3 0x7a 0x4f 0x2c 0xc0 0x62 0x4f 0x16 0x90 0xf6
   0x46 0x06 0xcf 0x38 0x59 0x45 0xb2 0xbe 0xc4 0xea.  This value is
   then base64-encoded, to give the value "s3pPLMBiTxaQ9kYGzzhZRbK+
   xOo=".  This value would then be echoed in the header |Sec-WebSocket-
   Accept|.


   The handshake from the server is much simpler than the client
   handshake.  The first line is an HTTP Status-Line, with the status
   code 101:

        HTTP/1.1 101 Switching Protocols

   Any status code other than 101 MUST be treated as a failure if
   semantics of that status code are not defined in the context of a



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   WebSocket connection, and the websocket connection aborted.  The
   headers follow the status code.

   The |Connection| and |Upgrade| headers complete the HTTP Upgrade.
   The |Sec-WebSocket-Accept| header indicates whether the server is
   willing to accept the connection.  If present, this header must
   include a hash of the client's nonce sent in |Sec-WebSocket-Key|
   along with a predefined GUID.  Any other value must not be
   interpreted as an acceptance of the connection by the server.


        HTTP/1.1 101 Switching Protocols
        Upgrade: websocket
        Connection: Upgrade
        Sec-WebSocket-Accept: s3pPLMBiTxaQ9kYGzzhZRbK+xOo=

   These fields are checked by the Web browser when it is acting as a
   |WebSocket| client for scripted pages.  If the |Sec-WebSocket-Accept|
   value does not match the expected value, or if the header is missing,
   or if the HTTP status code is not 101, the connection will not be
   established and WebSockets frames will not be sent.

   Option fields can also be included.  In this version of the protocol,
   the main option field is |Sec-WebSocket-Protocol|, which indicates
   the subprotocol that the server has selected.  Web browsers verify
   that the server included one of the values as was specified in the
   |WebSocket| constructor.  A server that speaks multiple subprotocols
   has to make sure it selects one based on the client's handshake and
   specifies it in its handshake.

        Sec-WebSocket-Protocol: chat

   The server can also set cookie-related option fields to _set_
   cookies, as in HTTP.

1.4.  Closing handshake

   _This section is non-normative._

   The closing handshake is far simpler than the opening handshake.

   Either peer can send a control frame with data containing a specified
   control sequence to begin the closing handshake (detailed in
   Section 4.5.1).  Upon receiving such a frame, the other peer sends a
   close frame in response, if it hasn't already sent one.  Upon
   receiving _that_ control frame, the first peer then closes the
   connection, safe in the knowledge that no further data is
   forthcoming.



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   After sending a control frame indicating the connection should be
   closed, a peer does not send any further data; after receiving a
   control frame indicating the connection should be closed, a peer
   discards any further data received.

   It is safe for both peers to initiate this handshake simultaneously.

   The closing handshake is intended to replace the TCP closing
   handshake (FIN/ACK), on the basis that the TCP closing handshake is
   not always reliable end-to-end, especially in the presence of man-in-
   the-middle proxies and other intermediaries.

   By sending a close frame and waiting for a close frame in response,

1.5.  Design philosophy

   _This section is non-normative._

   The WebSocket protocol is designed on the principle that there should
   be minimal framing (the only framing that exists is to make the
   protocol frame-based instead of stream-based, and to support a
   distinction between Unicode text and binary frames).  It is expected
   that metadata would be layered on top of WebSocket by the application
   layer, in the same way that metadata is layered on top of TCP by the
   application layer (HTTP).

   Conceptually, WebSocket is really just a layer on top of TCP that
   adds a Web "origin"-based security model for browsers; adds an
   addressing and protocol naming mechanism to support multiple services
   on one port and multiple host names on one IP address; layers a
   framing mechanism on top of TCP to get back to the IP packet
   mechanism that TCP is built on, but without length limits; and re-
   implements the closing handshake in-band.  Other than that, it adds
   nothing.  Basically it is intended to be as close to just exposing
   raw TCP to script as possible given the constraints of the Web. It's
   also designed in such a way that its servers can share a port with
   HTTP servers, by having its handshake be a valid HTTP Upgrade
   handshake also.

   The protocol is intended to be extensible; future versions will
   likely introduce additional concepts such as multiplexing.

1.6.  Security model

   _This section is non-normative._

   The WebSocket protocol uses the origin model used by Web browsers to
   restrict which Web pages can contact a WebSocket server when the



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   WebSocket protocol is used from a Web page.  Naturally, when the
   WebSocket protocol is used by a dedicated client directly (i.e. not
   from a Web page through a Web browser), the origin model is not
   useful, as the client can provide any arbitrary origin string.

   This protocol is intended to fail to establish a connection with
   servers of pre-existing protocols like SMTP or HTTP, while allowing
   HTTP servers to opt-in to supporting this protocol if desired.  This
   is achieved by having a strict and elaborate handshake, and by
   limiting the data that can be inserted into the connection before the
   handshake is finished (thus limiting how much the server can be
   influenced).

   It is similarly intended to fail to establish a connection when data
   from other protocols, especially HTTP, is sent to a WebSocket server,
   for example as might happen if an HTML |form| were submitted to a
   WebSocket server.  This is primarily achieved by requiring that the
   server prove that it read the handshake, which it can only do if the
   handshake contains the appropriate parts which themselves can only be
   sent by a WebSocket handshake.  In particular, at the time of writing
   of this specification, fields starting with |Sec-| cannot be set by
   an attacker from a Web browser using only HTML and JavaScript APIs
   such as |XMLHttpRequest|.

1.7.  Relationship to TCP and HTTP

   _This section is non-normative._

   The WebSocket protocol is an independent TCP-based protocol.  Its
   only relationship to HTTP is that its handshake is interpreted by
   HTTP servers as an Upgrade request.

   Based on the expert recommendation of the IANA, the WebSocket
   protocol by default uses port 80 for regular WebSocket connections
   and port 443 for WebSocket connections tunneled over TLS.

1.8.  Establishing a connection

   _This section is non-normative._

   When a connection is to be made to a port that is shared by an HTTP
   server (a situation that is quite likely to occur with traffic to
   ports 80 and 443), the connection will appear to the HTTP server to
   be a regular GET request with an Upgrade offer.  In relatively simple
   setups with just one IP address and a single server for all traffic
   to a single hostname, this might allow a practical way for systems
   based on the WebSocket protocol to be deployed.  In more elaborate
   setups (e.g. with load balancers and multiple servers), a dedicated



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   set of hosts for WebSocket connections separate from the HTTP servers
   is probably easier to manage.  At the time of writing of this
   specification, it should be noted that connections on port 80 and 443
   have significantly different success rates, with connections on port
   443 being significantly more likely to succeed, though this may
   change with time.

1.9.  Subprotocols using the WebSocket protocol

   _This section is non-normative._

   The client can request that the server use a specific subprotocol by
   including the |Sec-WebSocket-Protocol| field in its handshake.  If it
   is specified, the server needs to include the same field and one of
   the selected subprotocol values in its response for the connection to
   be established.

   These subprotocol names do not need to be registered, but if a
   subprotocol is intended to be implemented by multiple independent
   WebSocket servers, potential clashes with the names of subprotocols
   defined independently can be avoided by using names that contain the
   domain name of the subprotocol's originator.  For example, if Example
   Corporation were to create a Chat subprotocol to be implemented by
   many servers around the Web, they could name it "chat.example.com".
   If the Example Organization called their competing subprotocol
   "example.org's chat protocol", then the two subprotocols could be
   implemented by servers simultaneously, with the server dynamically
   selecting which subprotocol to use based on the value sent by the
   client.

   Subprotocols can be versioned in backwards-incompatible ways by
   changing the subprotocol name, e.g. going from "bookings.example.net"
   to "v2.bookings.example.net".  These subprotocols would be considered
   completely separate by WebSocket clients.  Backwards-compatible
   versioning can be implemented by reusing the same subprotocol string
   but carefully designing the actual subprotocol to support this kind
   of extensibility.














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2.  Conformance requirements

   All diagrams, examples, and notes in this specification are non-
   normative, as are all sections explicitly marked non-normative.
   Everything else in this specification is normative.

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT",
   "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in the normative parts of this
   document are to be interpreted as described in RFC2119.  For
   readability, these words do not appear in all uppercase letters in
   this specification.  [RFC2119]

   Requirements phrased in the imperative as part of algorithms (such as
   "strip any leading space characters" or "return false and abort these
   steps") are to be interpreted with the meaning of the key word
   ("must", "should", "may", etc) used in introducing the algorithm.

   Conformance requirements phrased as algorithms or specific steps may
   be implemented in any manner, so long as the end result is
   equivalent.  (In particular, the algorithms defined in this
   specification are intended to be easy to follow, and not intended to
   be performant.)

   Implementations may impose implementation-specific limits on
   otherwise unconstrained inputs, e.g. to prevent denial of service
   attacks, to guard against running out of memory, or to work around
   platform-specific limitations.

   The conformance classes defined by this specification are user agents
   and servers.

2.1.  Terminology

   *ASCII* shall mean the character-encoding scheme defined in
   [ANSI.X3-4.1986].

   *Converting a string to ASCII lowercase* means replacing all
   characters in the range U+0041 to U+005A (i.e.  LATIN CAPITAL LETTER
   A to LATIN CAPITAL LETTER Z) with the corresponding characters in the
   range U+0061 to U+007A (i.e.  LATIN SMALL LETTER A to LATIN SMALL
   LETTER Z).

   Comparing two strings in an *ASCII case-insensitive* manner means
   comparing them exactly, code point for code point, except that the
   characters in the range U+0041 to U+005A (i.e.  LATIN CAPITAL LETTER
   A to LATIN CAPITAL LETTER Z) and the corresponding characters in the
   range U+0061 to U+007A (i.e.  LATIN SMALL LETTER A to LATIN SMALL
   LETTER Z) are considered to also match.



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   The term "URI" is used in this section in a manner consistent with
   the terminology used in HTML, namely, to denote a string that might
   or might not be a valid URI or IRI and to which certain error
   handling behaviors will be applied when the string is parsed.
   [RFC3986]

   When an implementation is required to _send_ data as part of the
   WebSocket protocol, the implementation may delay the actual
   transmission arbitrarily, e.g. buffering data so as to send fewer IP
   packets.









































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3.  WebSocket URIs

3.1.  Parsing WebSocket URIs

   The steps to *parse a WebSocket URI's components* from a string /uri/
   are as follows.  These steps return either a /host/, a /port/, a
   /resource name/, and a /secure/ flag, or they fail.

   1.   If the /uri/ string is not an absolute URI, then fail this
        algorithm.  [RFC3986] [RFC3987]

   2.   Resolve the /uri/ string using the resolve a Web address
        algorithm defined by the Web addresses specification, with the
        URI character encoding set to UTF-8.  [RFC3629] [RFC3986]
        [RFC3987]

        NOTE: It doesn't matter what it is resolved relative to, since
        we already know it is an absolute URI at this point.

   3.   If /uri/ does not have a <scheme> component whose value, when
        converted to ASCII lowercase, is either "ws" or "wss", then fail
        this algorithm.

   4.   If /uri/ has a <fragment> component, then fail this algorithm.

   5.   If the <scheme> component of /uri/ is "ws", set /secure/ to
        false; otherwise, if the <scheme> component is "wss", set
        /secure/ to true; otherwise, fail this algorithm.

   6.   Let /host/ be the value of the <host> component of /uri/,
        converted to ASCII lowercase.

   7.   If /uri/ has a <port> component, then let /port/ be that
        component's value; otherwise, there is no explicit /port/.

   8.   If there is no explicit /port/, then: if /secure/ is false, let
        /port/ be 80, otherwise let /port/ be 443.

   9.   Let /resource name/ be the value of the <path> component (which
        might be empty) of /uri/.

   10.  If /resource name/ is the empty string, set it to a single
        character U+002F SOLIDUS (/).

   11.  If /uri/ has a <query> component, then append a single U+003F
        QUESTION MARK character (?) to /resource name/, followed by the
        value of the <query> component.




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   12.  Return /host/, /port/, /resource name/, and /secure/.

3.2.  Constructing WebSocket URIs

   The steps to *construct a WebSocket URI* from a /host/, a /port/, a
   /resource name/, and a /secure/ flag, are as follows:

   1.  Let /uri/ be the empty string.

   2.  If the /secure/ flag is false, then append the string "ws://" to
       /uri/.  Otherwise, append the string "wss://" to /uri/.

   3.  Append /host/ to /uri/.

   4.  If the /secure/ flag is false and port is not 80, or if the
       /secure/ flag is true and port is not 443, then append the string
       ":" followed by /port/ to /uri/.

   5.  Append /resource name/ to /uri/.

   6.  Return /uri/.

3.3.  Valid WebSocket URIs

   For a WebSocket URI to be considered valid, the following conditions
   MUST hold.

   o  The /host/ must be ASCII-only (i.e. it must have been punycode-
      encoded already if necessary, and MUST NOT contain any characters
      above U+007E).

   o  The /resource name/ string must be a non-empty string of
      characters in the range U+0021 to U+007E that starts with a U+002F
      SOLIDUS character (/).

   Any WebSocket URIs not meeting the above criteria are considered
   invalid, and a client MUST NOT attempt to make a connection to an
   invalid WebSocket URI.  A client SHOULD attempt to parse a URI
   obtained from any external source (such as a web site or a user)
   using the steps specified in Section 3.1 to obtain a valid WebSocket
   URI, but MUST NOT attempt to connect with such an unparsed URI, and
   instead only use the parsed version and only if that version is
   considered valid by the criteria above.








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4.  Data Framing

4.1.  Overview

   In the WebSocket protocol, data is transmitted using a sequence of
   frames.  Frames sent from the client to the server are masked to
   avoid confusing network intermediaries, such as intercepting proxies.
   Frames sent from the server to the client are not masked.

   The base framing protocol defines a frame type with an opcode, a
   payload length, and designated locations for extension and
   application data, which together define the _payload_ data.  Certain
   bits and opcodes are reserved for future expansion of the protocol.
   As such, In the absence of extensions negotiated during the opening
   handshake (Section 5), all reserved bits MUST be 0 and reserved
   opcode values MUST NOT be used.

   A data frame MAY be transmitted by either the client or the server at
   any time after handshake completion and before that endpoint has sent
   a close message (Section 4.5.1).

4.2.  Client-to-Server Masking

   The client MUST mask all frames sent to the server.

   The masking-key is contained completely within the frame.

   The masking-key is a 32-bit value chosen at random by the client.
   The masking-key MUST be derived from a strong source of entropy, and
   the masking-key for a given frame MUST NOT make it simple for a
   server to predict the masking-key for a subsequent frame.

   Each masked frame consists of a 32-bit masking-key followed by
   masked-data:


     masked-frame  = masking-key masked-data
     masking-key   = 4full-octet
     masked-data   = *full-octet
     full-octet    = %x00-FF


   The masked-data is the clear-text frame "encrypted" using a simple
   XOR cipher as follows.

   Octet i of the masked-data is the XOR of octet i of the clear text
   frame with octet i modulo 4 of the masking-key:




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     j              = i MOD 4
     masked-octet-i = clear-text-octet-i XOR octet-j-of-masking-key


   When preparing a masked-frame, the client MUST pick a fresh masking-
   key uniformly at random from the set of allowed 32-bit values.  The
   unpredictability of the masking-nonce is essential to prevent the
   author of malicious application data from selecting the bytes that
   appear on the wire.

4.3.  Base Framing Protocol

   This wire format for the data transfer part is described by the ABNF
   given in detail in this section.  A high level overview of the
   framing is given in the following figure.  [RFC5234]


      0                   1                   2                   3
      0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
     +-+-+-+-+-------+-+-------------+-------------------------------+
     |F|R|R|R| opcode|R| Payload len |    Extended payload length    |
     |I|S|S|S|  (4)  |S|     (7)     |             (16/63)           |
     |N|V|V|V|       |V|             |   (if payload len==126/127)   |
     | |1|2|3|       |4|             |                               |
     +-+-+-+-+-------+-+-------------+ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - +
     |     Extended payload length continued, if payload len == 127  |
     + - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - +-------------------------------+
     |                               |         Extension data        |
     +-------------------------------+ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - +
     :                                                               :
     +---------------------------------------------------------------+
     :                       Application data                        :
     +---------------------------------------------------------------+

   FIN:  1 bit

      Indicates that this is the final fragment in a message.  The first
      fragment may also be the final fragment.

   RSV1, RSV2, RSV3, RSV4:  1 bit each

      Must be 0 unless an extension is negotiated which defines meanings
      for non-zero values

   Opcode:  4 bits

      Defines the interpretation of the payload data




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   Payload length:  7 bits

      The length of the payload: if 0-125, that is the payload length.
      If 126, the following 2 bytes interpreted as a 16 bit unsigned
      integer are the payload length.  If 127, the following 8 bytes
      interpreted as a 64-bit unsigned integer (the high bit must be 0)
      are the payload length.  Multibyte length quantities are expressed
      in network byte order.  The payload length is the length of the
      Extension data + the length of the Application Data.  The length
      of the Extension data may be zero, in which case the Payload
      length is the length of the Application data.

   Extension data:  n bytes

      The extension data is 0 bytes unless there is a reserved op-code
      or reserved bit present in the frame which indicates an extension
      has been negotiated.  Any extension MUST specify the length of the
      extension data, or how that length may be calculated, and its use
      MUST be negotiated during the handshake.  If present, the
      extension data is included in the total payload length.

   Application data:  n bytes

      Arbitrary application data, taking up the remainder of the frame
      after any extension data.  The length of the Application data is
      equal to the payload length minus the length of the Extension
      data.

   The base framing protocol is formally defined by the following ABNF
   [RFC5234]:





















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      ws-frame               = frame-fin
                               frame-rsv1
                               frame-rsv2
                               frame-rsv3
                               frame-opcode
                               frame-rsv4
                               frame-length
                               frame-extension
                               application-data;

      frame-fin              = %x0 ; more frames of this message follow
                             / %x1 ; final frame of message

      frame-rsv1             = %x0 ; 1 bit, must be 0

      frame-rsv2             = %x0 ; 1 bit, must be 0

      frame-rsv3             = %x0 ; 1 bit, must be 0

      frame-opcode           = %x0 ; continuation frame
                             / %x1 ; connection close
                             / %x2 ; ping
                             / %x3 ; pong
                             / %x4 ; text frame
                             / %x5 ; binary frame
                             / %x6-F ; reserved

      frame-rsv4             = %x0 ; 1 bit, must be 0

      frame-length           = %x00-7D
                             / %x7E frame-length-16
                             / %x7F frame-length-63

      frame-length-16        = %x0000-FFFF

      frame-length-63        = %x0000000000000000-7FFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

      frame-extension        = *( %x00-FF ) ; to be defined later

      application-data       = *( %x00-FF )

4.4.  Fragmentation

   The primary purpose of fragmentation is to allow sending a message
   that is of unknown size when the message is started without having to
   buffer that message.  If messages couldn't be fragmented, then an
   endpoint would have to buffer the entire message so its length could
   be counted before first byte is sent.  With fragmentation, a server



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   or intermediary may choose a reasonable size buffer, and when the
   buffer is full write a fragment to the network.

   A secondary use-case for fragmentation is for multiplexing, where it
   is not desirable for a large message on one logical channel to
   monopolize the output channel, so the MUX needs to be free to split
   the message into smaller fragments to better share the output
   channel.

   The following rules apply to fragmentation:

   o  An unfragmented message consists of a single frame with the FIN
      bit set and an opcode other than 0.

   o  A fragmented message consists of a single frame with the FIN bit
      clear and an opcode other than 0, followed by zero or more frames
      with the FIN bit clear and the opcode set to 0, and terminated by
      a single frame with the FIN bit set and an opcode of 0.  Its
      content is the concatenation of the application data from each of
      those frames in order.  As an example, for a text message sent as
      three fragments, the first fragment would have an opcode of 0x4
      and a FIN bit clear, the second fragment would have an opcode of
      0x0 and a FIN bit clear, and the third fragment would have an
      opcode of 0x0 and a FIN bit that is set.

   o  Control frames MAY be injected in the middle of a fragmented
      message.  Control frames themselves MUST NOT be fragmented. _Note:
      if control frames could not be interjected, the latency of a ping,
      for example, would be very long if behind a large message.  As
      such, an endpoint MUST be capable of handling control frames in
      the middle of a fragmented message._

   o  A sender MAY create fragments of any size for non control
      messages.

   o  Clients and servers MUST support receiving both fragmented and
      unfragmented messages.

   o  An intermediary MAY change the fragmentation of a message if the
      message uses only opcode and reserved bit values known to the
      intermediary.

   o  As a consequence of these rules, all fragments of a message are of
      the same type, as set by the first fragment's opcode.  Since
      Control frames cannot be fragmented, the type for all fragments in
      a message MUST be either text or binary, or one of the reserved
      opcodes.




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4.5.  Control Frames

   Control frames have opcodes of 0x01 (Close), 0x02 (Ping), or 0x03
   (Pong).  Control frames are used to communicate state about the
   websocket.  Control frames can be interjected in the middle of a
   fragmented message.

   All control frames MUST be 125 bytes or less in length and MUST NOT
   be fragmented.

4.5.1.  Close

   The Close message contains an opcode of 0x01.

   The Close message MAY contain a body (the "application data" portion
   of the frame) that indicates a reason for closing, such as an
   endpoint shutting down, an endpoint having received a message too
   large, or an endpoint having received a message that does not conform
   to the format expected by the other endpoint.  If there is a body,
   the first two bytes of the body MUST be a 2-byte integer (in network
   byte order) representing a status code defined in Section 7.4.
   Following the 2-byte integer the body MAY contain UTF-8 encoded data,
   the interpretation of which is not defined by this specification.

   The application MUST NOT send any more data messages after sending a
   close message.

   If an endpoint receives a Close message and that endpoint did not
   previously send a Close message, the endpoint MUST send a Close
   message in response.  It SHOULD do so as soon as is practical.

   After both sending and receiving a close message, an endpoint
   considers the websocket connection closed, and SHOULD close the
   underlying TCP connection.

   If a client and server both send a Close message at the same time,
   both endpoints will have sent and received a Close message and should
   consider the websocket connection closed and close the underlying TCP
   connection.

4.5.2.  Ping

   The Ping message contains an opcode of 0x02.

   Upon receipt of a Ping message, an endpoint MUST send a Pong message
   in response.  It SHOULD do so as soon as is practical.  The message
   bodies of the Ping and Pong MUST be the same.




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4.5.3.  Pong

   The Pong message contains an opcode of 0x03.

   Upon receipt of a Ping message, an endpoint MUST send a Pong message
   in response.  It SHOULD do so as soon as is practical.  The message
   bodies of the Ping and Pong MUST be the same.  A Pong is issued only
   in response to the most recent Ping.

4.6.  Data Frames

   All frame types not listed in Section 4.5 are data frames, which
   transport application-layer data.  The opcode determines the
   interpretation of the application data:

   Text

      The payload data is text data encoded as UTF-8.

   Binary

      The payload data is arbitrary binary data whose interpretation is
      solely up to the application layer.

4.7.  Examples

   _This section is non-normative._

   o  A single-frame text message

      *  0x84 0x05 0x48 0x65 0x6c 0x6c 0x6f (contains "Hello")

   o  A fragmented text message

      *  0x04 0x03 0x48 0x65 0x6c (contains "Hel")

      *  0x80 0x02 0x6c 0x6f (contains "lo")

   o  Ping request and response

      *  0x82 0x05 0x48 0x65 0x6c 0x6c 0x6f (contains a body of "Hello",
         but the contents of the body are arbitrary)

      *  0x83 0x05 0x48 0x65 0x6c 0x6c 0x6f (contains a body of "Hello",
         matching the body of the ping)






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   o  256 bytes binary message in a single frame

      *  0x85 0x7E 0x0100 [256 bytes of binary data]

   o  64KiB binary message in a single frame

      *  0x85 0x7F 0x0000000000010000 [65536 bytes of binary data]

4.8.  Extensibility

   The protocol is designed to allow for extensions, which will add
   capabilities to the base protocols.  The endpoints of a connection
   MUST negotiate the use of any extensions during the handshake.  This
   specification provides opcodes 0x6 through 0xF, the extension data
   field, and the frame-rsv1, frame-rsv2, frame-rsv3, and frame-rsv4
   bits of the frame header for use by extensions.  The negotiation of
   extensions is discussed in further detail in Section 8.1.  Below are
   some anticipated uses of extensions.  This list is neither complete
   nor proscriptive.

   o  Extension data may be placed in the payload before the application
      data.

   o  Reserved bits can be allocated for per-frame needs.

   o  Reserved opcode values can be defined.

   o  Reserved bits can be allocated to the opcode field if more opcode
      values are needed.

   o  A reserved bit or an "extension" opcode can be defined which
      allocates additional bits out of the payload area to define larger
      opcodes or more per-frame bits.


















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5.  Opening Handshake

5.1.  Client Requirements

   User agents running in controlled environments, e.g. browsers on
   mobile handsets tied to specific carriers, may offload the management
   of the connection to another agent on the network.  In such a
   situation, the user agent for the purposes of conformance is
   considered to include both the handset software and any such agents.

   When the user agent is to *establish a WebSocket connection* to a
   WebSocket URI /uri/, it must meet the following requirements.  In the
   following text, we will use terms from Section 3 such as "/host/" and
   "/secure/ flag" as defined in that section.

   1.  The WebSocket URI and its components MUST be valid according to
       Section 3.3.  If any of the requirements are not met, the client
       MUST fail the WebSocket connection and abort these steps.

   2.  If the user agent already has a WebSocket connection to the
       remote host (IP address) identified by /host/, even if known by
       another name, the user agent MUST wait until that connection has
       been established or for that connection to have failed.  There
       MUST be no more than one connection in a CONNECTING state.  If
       multiple connections to the same IP address are attempted
       simultaneously, the user agent MUST serialize them so that there
       is no more than one connection at a time running through the
       following steps.

       If the user agent cannot determine the IP address of the remote
       host (for example because all communication is being done through
       a proxy server that performs DNS queries itself), then the user
       agent MUST assume for the purposes of this step that each host
       name refers to a distinct remote host, but should instead limit
       the total number of simultaneous connections that are not
       established to a reasonably low number (e.g., in a Web browser,
       to the number of tabs the user has open).

       NOTE: This makes it harder for a script to perform a denial of
       service attack by just opening a large number of WebSocket
       connections to a remote host.  A server can further reduce the
       load on itself when attacked by making use of this by pausing
       before closing the connection, as that will reduce the rate at
       which the client reconnects.

       NOTE: There is no limit to the number of established WebSocket
       connections a user agent can have with a single remote host.
       Servers can refuse to connect users with an excessive number of



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       connections, or disconnect resource-hogging users when suffering
       high load.

   3.  _Proxy Usage_: If the user agent is configured to use a proxy
       when using the WebSocket protocol to connect to host /host/
       and/or port /port/, then the user agent SHOULD connect to that
       proxy and ask it to open a TCP connection to the host given by
       /host/ and the port given by /port/.

          EXAMPLE: For example, if the user agent uses an HTTP proxy for
          all traffic, then if it was to try to connect to port 80 on
          server example.com, it might send the following lines to the
          proxy server:


              CONNECT example.com:80 HTTP/1.1
              Host: example.com

          If there was a password, the connection might look like:


              CONNECT example.com:80 HTTP/1.1
              Host: example.com
              Proxy-authorization: Basic ZWRuYW1vZGU6bm9jYXBlcyE=

       If the user agent is not configured to use a proxy, then a direct
       TCP connection SHOULD be opened to the host given by /host/ and
       the port given by /port/.

       NOTE: Implementations that do not expose explicit UI for
       selecting a proxy for WebSocket connections separate from other
       proxies are encouraged to use a SOCKS proxy for WebSocket
       connections, if available, or failing that, to prefer the proxy
       configured for HTTPS connections over the proxy configured for
       HTTP connections.

       For the purpose of proxy autoconfiguration scripts, the URI to
       pass the function must be constructed from /host/, /port/,
       /resource name/, and the /secure/ flag using the steps to
       construct a WebSocket URI.

       NOTE: The WebSocket protocol can be identified in proxy
       autoconfiguration scripts from the scheme ("ws:" for unencrypted
       connections and "wss:" for encrypted connections).

   4.  If the connection could not be opened, either because a direct
       connection failed or because any proxy used returned an error,
       then the user agent MUST fail the WebSocket connection and abort



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       the connection attempt.

   5.  If /secure/ is true, the user agent MUST perform a TLS handshake
       over the connection.  If this fails (e.g. the server's
       certificate could not be verified), then the user agent MUST fail
       the WebSocket connection and abort the connection.  Otherwise,
       all further communication on this channel MUST run through the
       encrypted tunnel.  [RFC2246]

       User agents MUST use the Server Name Indication extension in the
       TLS handshake.  [RFC4366]

   Once a connection to the server has been established (including a
   connection via a proxy or over a TLS-encrypted tunnel), the client
   MUST send a handshake to the server.  The handshake consists of an
   HTTP upgrade request, along with a list of required and optional
   headers.  The requirements for this handshake are as follows.

   1.   The handshake must be a valid HTTP request as specified by
        [RFC2616].

   2.   The Method of the request MUST be GET and the HTTP version MUST
        be at least 1.1.

        For example, if the WebSocket URI is "ws://example.com/chat",
        The first line sent SHOULD be "GET /chat HTTP/1.1"

   3.   The request must contain a "Request-URI" as part of the GET
        method.  This MUST match the /resource name/ Section 3.

   4.   The request MUST contain a "Host" header whose value is equal to
        the authority component of the WebSocket URI.

   5.   The request MUST contain an "Upgrade" header whose value is
        equal to "websocket".

   6.   The request MUST contain a "Connection" header whose value MUST
        include the "Upgrade" token.

   7.   The request MUST include a header with the name "Sec-WebSocket-
        Key".  The value of this header MUST be a nonce consisting of a
        randomly selected 16-byte value that has been base64-encoded
        [RFC3548].  The nonce MUST be randomly selected randomly for
        each connection.

        NOTE: As an example, if the randomly selected value was the
        sequence of bytes 0x01 0x02 0x03 0x04 0x05 0x06 0x07 0x08 0x09
        0x0a 0x0b 0x0c 0x0d 0x0e 0x0f 0x10, the value of the header



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        would be "AQIDBAUGBwgJCgsMDQ4PEC=="

   8.   The request MUST include a header with the name "Sec-WebSocket-
        Origin" if the request is coming from a browser client.  If the
        connection is from a non-browser client, the request MAY include
        this header if the semantics of that client match the use-case
        described here for browser clients.  The value of this header
        MUST be the ASCII serialization of origin of the context in
        which the code establishing the connection is running, and MUST
        be lower-case.  The value MUST NOT contain letters in the range
        U+0041 to U+005A (i.e.  LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A to LATIN CAPITAL
        LETTER Z) [I-D.ietf-websec-origin].

        As an example, if code is running on www.example.com attempting
        to establish a connection to ww2.example.com, the value of the
        header would be "http://www.example.com".

   9.   The request MUST include a header with the name "Sec-WebSocket-
        Version".  The value of this header must be 6.

   10.  The request MAY include a header with the name "Sec-WebSocket-
        Protocol".  If present, this value indicates the subprotocol(s)
        the client wishes to speak.  The elements that comprise this
        value MUST be non-empty strings with characters in the range
        U+0021 to U+007E and MUST all be unique.  The ABNF for the value
        of this header is 1#(token | quoted-string), where the
        definitions of constructs and rules are as given in [RFC2616].

   11.  The request MAY include a header with the name "Sec-WebSocket-
        Extensions".  If present, this value indicates the protocol-
        level extension(s) the client wishes to speak.  The
        interpretation and format of this header is described in
        Section 8.1.

   12.  The request MAY include headers associated with sending cookies,
        as defined by the appropriate specifications
        [I-D.ietf-httpstate-cookie].

   Once the client's opening handshake has been sent, the client MUST
   wait for a response from the server before sending any further data.
   The client MUST validate the server's response as follows:

   o  If the status code received from the server is not 101, the client
      MUST fail the WebSocket connection.

   o  If the response lacks an Upgrade header or the Upgrade header
      contains a value that is not an ASCII case-insensitive match for
      the value "websocket", the client MUST fail the WebSocket



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      connection.

   o  If the response lacks a Connection header or the Connection header
      contains a value that is not an ASCII case-insensitive match for
      the value "Upgrade", the client MUST fail the WebSocket
      connection.

   o  If the response lacks a Sec-WebSocket-Accept header or the Sec-
      WebSocket-Accept contains a value other than the base64-encoded
      SHA-1 of the concatenation of the Sec-WebSocket-Key (as a string,
      not base64-decoded) with the string "258EAFA5-E914-47DA-95CA-
      C5AB0DC85B11", the client MUST fail the WebSocket connection.

   Where the algorithm above requires that a user agent fail the
   WebSocket connection, the user agent may first read an arbitrary
   number of further bytes from the connection (and then discard them)
   before actually *failing the WebSocket connection*.  Similarly, if a
   user agent can show that the bytes read from the connection so far
   are such that there is no subsequent sequence of bytes that the
   server can send that would not result in the user agent being
   required to *fail the WebSocket connection*, the user agent may
   immediately *fail the WebSocket connection* without waiting for those
   bytes.

   NOTE: The previous paragraph is intended to make it conforming for
   user agents to implement the algorithm in subtly different ways that
   are equivalent in all ways except that they terminate the connection
   at earlier or later points.  For example, it enables an
   implementation to buffer the entire handshake response before
   checking it, or to verify each field as it is received rather than
   collecting all the fields and then checking them as a block.

5.2.  Server-side requirements

   _This section only applies to servers._

   Servers may offload the management of the connection to other agents
   on the network, for example load balancers and reverse proxies.  In
   such a situation, the server for the purposes of conformance is
   considered to include all parts of the server-side infrastructure
   from the first device to terminate the TCP connection all the way to
   the server that processes requests and sends responses.

   EXAMPLE: For example, a data center might have a server that responds
   to WebSocket requests with an appropriate handshake, and then passes
   the connection to another server to actually process the data frames.
   For the purposes of this specification, the "server" is the
   combination of both computers.



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5.2.1.  Reading the client's opening handshake

   When a client starts a WebSocket connection, it sends its part of the
   opening handshake.  The server must parse at least part of this
   handshake in order to obtain the necessary information to generate
   the server part of the handshake.

   The client handshake consists of the following parts.  If the server,
   while reading the handshake, finds that the client did not send a
   handshake that matches the description below, the server must abort
   the WebSocket connection.

   1.  An HTTP/1.1 or higher GET request, including a "Request-URI"
       [RFC2616] that should be interpreted as a /resource name/
       Section 3.

   2.  A "Host" header containing the server's authority.

   3.  A "Sec-WebSocket-Key" header with a base64-encoded value that,
       when decoded, is 16 bytes in length.

   4.  A "Sec-WebSocket-Version" header, with a value of 6.

   5.  Optionally, a "Sec-WebSocket-Origin" header.  This header is sent
       by all browser clients.  A connection attempt lacking this header
       SHOULD NOT be interpreted as coming from a browser client.

   6.  Optionally, a "Sec-WebSocket-Protocol header, with a list of
       values indicating which protocols the client would like to speak,
       ordered by preference.

   7.  Optionally, a "Sec-WebSocket-Extensions" header, with a list of
       values indicating which extensions the client would like to
       speak.  The interpretation of this header is discussed in
       Section 8.1.

   8.  Optionally, other headers, such as those used to send cookies to
       a server.  Unknown headers MUST be ignored.

5.2.2.  Sending the server's opening handshake

   When a client establishes a WebSocket connection to a server, the
   server must complete the following steps to accept the connection and
   send the server's opening handshake.

   1.  If the server supports encryption, perform a TLS handshake over
       the connection.  If this fails (e.g. the client indicated a host
       name in the extended client hello "server_name" extension that



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       the server does not host), then close the connection; otherwise,
       all further communication for the connection (including the
       server handshake) must run through the encrypted tunnel.
       [RFC2246]

   2.  Establish the following information:

       /origin/
          The |Sec-WebSocket-Origin| header in the client's handshake
          indicates the origin of the script establishing the
          connection.  The origin is serialized to ASCII and converted
          to lowercase.  The server MAY use this information as part of
          a determination of whether to accept the incoming connection.

       /key/
          The |Sec-WebSocket-Key| header in the client's handshake
          includes a base64-encoded value that, if decoded, is 16 bytes
          in length.  This (encoded) value is used in the creation of
          the server's handshake to indicate an acceptance of the
          connection.  It is not necessary for the server to base64-
          decode the Sec-WebSocket-Key value.

       /version/
          The |Sec-WebSocket-Version| header in the client's handshake
          includes the version of the WebSocket protocol the client is
          attempting to communicate with.  If this version does not
          match a version understood by the server, the server MUST
          abort the WebSocket connection.  The server MAY send a non-200
          response code with a |Sec-WebSocket-Version| header indicating
          the version(s) the server is capable of understanding along
          with this non-200 response code.

       /resource name/
          An identifier for the service provided by the server.  If the
          server provides multiple services, then the value should be
          derived from the resource name given in the client's handshake
          from the Request-URI [RFC2616] of the GET method.

       /subprotocol/
          A (possibly empty) list representing the subprotocol the
          server is ready to use.  If the server supports multiple
          subprotocols, then the value should be derived from the
          client's handshake, specifically by selecting one of the
          values from the "Sec-WebSocket-Protocol" field.  The absence
          of such a field is equivalent to the null value.  The empty
          string is not the same as the null value for these purposes.





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       /extensions/
          A (possibly empty) list representing the protocol-level
          extensions the server is ready to use.  If the server supports
          multiple extensions, then the value should be derived from the
          client's handshake, specifically by selecting one or more of
          the values from the "Sec-WebSocket-Extensions" field.  The
          absence of such a field is equivalent to the null value.  The
          empty string is not the same as the null value for these
          purposes.  Extensions not listed by the client MUST NOT be
          listed.  The method by which these values should be selected
          and interpreted is discussed in Section 8.1.

   3.  If the server chooses to accept the incoming connection, it must
       reply with a valid HTTP response indicating the following.

       1.  A 101 response code.  Such a response could look like
           "HTTP/1.1 101 Switching Protocols"

       2.  A "Sec-WebSocket-Accept" header.  The value of this header is
           constructed by concatenating /key/, defined above in
           Paragraph 2 of Section 5.2.2, with the string "258EAFA5-E914-
           47DA-95CA-C5AB0DC85B11", taking the SHA-1 hash of this
           concatenated value to obtain a 20-byte value, and base64-
           encoding this 20-byte hash.

           NOTE: As an example, if the value of the "Sec-WebSocket-Key"
           header in the client's handshake were
           "dGhlIHNhbXBsZSBub25jZQ==", the server would append the
           string "258EAFA5-E914-47DA-95CA-C5AB0DC85B11" to form the
           string "dGhlIHNhbXBsZSBub25jZQ==258EAFA5-E914-47DA-95CA-
           C5AB0DC85B11".  The server would then take the SHA-1 hash of
           this string, giving the value 0xb3 0x7a 0x4f 0x2c 0xc0 0x62
           0x4f 0x16 0x90 0xf6 0x46 0x06 0xcf 0x38 0x59 0x45 0xb2 0xbe
           0xc4 0xea.  This value is then base64-encoded, to give the
           value "s3pPLMBiTxaQ9kYGzzhZRbK+xOo=", which would be returned
           in the "Sec-WebSocket-Accept" header.

       3.  Optionally, a "Sec-WebSocket-Protocol" header, with a value
           /subprotocol/ as defined in Paragraph 2 of Section 5.2.2.

       4.  Optionally, a "Sec-WebSocket-Extensions" header, with a value
           /extensions/ as defined in Paragraph 2 of Section 5.2.2.

   This completes the server's handshake.  If the server finishes these
   steps without aborting the WebSocket connection, and if the client
   does not then fail the WebSocket connection, then the connection is
   established and the server may begin sending and receiving data, as
   described in the next section.



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6.  Error Handling

6.1.  Handling errors in UTF-8 from the server

   When a client is to interpret a byte stream as UTF-8 but finds that
   the byte stream is not in fact a valid UTF-8 stream, then any bytes
   or sequences of bytes that are not valid UTF-8 sequences must be
   interpreted as a U+FFFD REPLACEMENT CHARACTER.

6.2.  Handling errors in UTF-8 from the client

   When a server is to interpret a byte stream as UTF-8 but finds that
   the byte stream is not in fact a valid UTF-8 stream, behavior is
   undefined.  A server could close the connection, convert invalid byte
   sequences to U+FFFD REPLACEMENT CHARACTERs, store the data verbatim,
   or perform application-specific processing.  Subprotocols layered on
   the WebSocket protocol might define specific behavior for servers.


































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7.  Closing the connection

7.1.  Definitions

7.1.1.  Close the WebSocket Connection

   To _Close the WebSocket Connection_, an endpoint closes the
   underlying TCP connection.  An endpoint SHOULD use a method that
   cleanly closes the TCP connection, discarding any trailing bytes that
   may be received.  And endpoint MAY close the connection via any means
   available when necessary, such as when under attack.

   As an example of how to obtain a clean closure in C using Berkeley
   sockets, one would call shutdown() with SHUT_WR on the socket, call
   recv() until obtaining a return value of 0 indicating that the peer
   has also performed an orderly shutdown, and finally calling close()
   on the socket.

7.1.2.  Start the WebSocket Closing Handshake

   To _start the WebSocket closing handshake_, and endpoint MUST send a
   Close control frame, as described in Section 4.5.1.  Upon receiving a
   Close control frame, the other party sends a Close control frame in
   response.  Once an endpoint has both sent and received a Close
   control frame, that endpoint should _Close the WebSocket Connection_
   as defined in Section 7.1.1.

7.1.3.  The WebSocket Connection Is Closed

   When the underlying TCP connection is closed, it is said that _the
   WebSocket connection is closed_.  If the tcp connection was closed
   after the WebSocket closing handshake was completed, the WebSocket
   connection is said to have been closed _cleanly_.

7.1.4.  Fail the WebSocket Connection

   Certain algorithms and specifications require a user agent to _fail
   the WebSocket connection_.  To do so, the user agent must _Close the
   WebSocket Connection_, and MAY report the problem to the user (which
   would be especially useful for developers) in an appropriate manner.

   Except as indicated above or as specified by the application layer
   (e.g. a script using the WebSocket API), user agents SHOULD NOT close
   the connection.







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7.2.  Abnormal closures

7.2.1.  Client-initiated closure

   Certain algorithms, namely during the initial handshake, require the
   user agent to *fail the WebSocket connection*.  To do so, the user
   agent must _Close the WebSocket connection_ as previously defined,
   and may report the problem to the user via an appropriate mechanism
   (which would be especially useful for developers).

   Except as indicated above or as specified by the application layer
   (e.g. a script using the WebSocket API), user agents should not close
   the connection.

7.2.2.  Server-initiated closure

   Certain algorithms require or recommend that the server _abort the
   WebSocket connection_ during the opening handshake.  To do so, the
   server must simply _close the WebSocket connection_ (Section 7.1.1).

7.3.  Normal closure of connections

   Servers MAY close the WebSocket connection whenever desired.  User
   agents SHOULD NOT close the WebSocket connection arbitrarily.  In
   either case, an endpoint initiates a closure by following the
   procedures to _start the WebSocket closing handshake_
   (Section 7.1.2).

7.4.  Status codes

   When closing an established connection (e.g. when sending a Close
   frame, after the handshake has completed), an endpoint MAY indicate a
   reason for closure.  The interpretation of this reason by an
   endpoint, and the action an endpoint should take given this reason,
   are left undefined by this specification.  This specification defines
   a set of pre-defined status codes, and specifies which ranges may be
   used by extensions, frameworks, and end applications.  The status
   code and any associated textual message are optional components of a
   Close frame.

7.4.1.  Defined Status Codes

   Endpoints MAY use the following pre-defined status codes when sending
   a Close frame.







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   1000

      1000 indicates a normal closure, meaning whatever purpose the
      connection was established for has been fulfilled.

   1001

      1001 indicates that an endpoint is "going away", such as a server
      going down, or a browser having navigated away from a page.

   1002

      1002 indicates that an endpoint is terminating the connection due
      to a protocol error.

   1003

      1003 indicates that an endpoint is terminating the connection
      because it has received a type of data it cannot accept (e.g. an
      endpoint that understands only text data may send this if it
      receives a binary message.)

   1004

      1004 indicates that an endpoint is terminating the connection
      because it has received a message that is too large.

7.4.2.  Reserved status code ranges

   0-999

      Status codes in the range 0-999 are not used.

   1000-1999

      Status codes in the range 1000-1999 are reserved for definition by
      this protocol.

   2000-2999

      Status codes in the range 2000-2999 are reserved for use by
      extensions.

   3000-3999

      Status codes in the range 3000-3999 MAY be used by libraries and
      frameworks.  The interpretation of these codes is undefined by
      this protocol.  End applications MUST NOT use status codes in this



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      range.

   4000-4999

      Status codes in the range 4000-4999 MAY be used by application
      code.  The interpretaion of these codes is undefined by this
      protocol.












































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8.  Extensions

   WebSocket clients MAY request extensions to this specification, and
   WebSocket servers MAY accept some or all extensions requested by the
   client.  A server MUST NOT respond with any extension not requested
   by the client.  If extension parameters are included in negotiations
   between the client and the server, those parameters MUST be chosen in
   accordance with the specification of the extension to which the
   parameters apply.

8.1.  Negotiating extensions

   A client requests extensions by including a "Sec-WebSocket-
   Extensions" header, which follows the normal rules for HTTP headers
   (see [RFC2616] section 4.2) and the value of the header is defined by
   the following ABNF:

         extension-list = 1#extension
         extension = extension-token *( ";" extension-param )
         extension-token = registered-token | private-use-token
         registered-token = token
         private-use-token = "x-" token
         extension-param = token [ "=" ( token | quoted-string ) ]

   Note that like other HTTP headers, this header may be split or
   combined across multiple lines.  Ergo, the following are equivalent:

         Sec-WebSocket-Extensions: foo
         Sec-WebSocket-Extensions: bar; baz=2

   is exactly equivalent to

         Sec-WebSocket-Extensions: foo, bar; baz=2

   Any extension-token used must either be a registered token
   (registration TBD), or have a prefix of "x-" to indicate a private-
   use token.  The parameters supplied with any given extension MUST be
   defined for that extension.  Note that the client is only offering to
   use any advertised extensions, and MUST NOT use them unless the
   server accepts the extension.

   Note that the order of extensions is significant.  Any interactions
   between multiple extensions MAY be defined in the documents defining
   the extensions.  In the absence of such definition, the
   interpretation is that the headers listed by the client in its
   request represent a preference of the headers it wishes to use, with
   the first options listed being most preferable.  The extensions
   listed by the server in response represent the extensions actually in



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   use.  Should the extensions modify the data and/or framing, the order
   of operations on the data should be assumed to be the same as the
   order in which the extensions are listed in the server's response in
   the opening handshake.

   For example, if there are two extensions "foo" and "bar", if the
   header |Sec-WebSocket-Extensions| sent by the server has the value
   "foo, bar" then operations on the data will be made as
   bar(foo(data)), be those changes to the data itself (such as
   compression) or changes to the framing thay may "stack".

   Non-normative examples of acceptable extension headers:

      Sec-WebSocket-Extensions: deflate-stream
      Sec-WebSocket-Extensions: mux; max-channels=4; flow-control, deflate-stream
      Sec-WebSocket-Extensions: x-private-extension

   A server accepts one or more extensions by including a |Sec-
   WebSocket-Extensions| header containing one or more extensions which
   were requested by the client.  The interpretation of any extension
   parameters, and what constitutes a valid response by a server to a
   requested set of parameters by a client, will be defined by each such
   extension.

8.2.  Known extensions

   Extensions provide a mechanism for implementations to opt-in to
   additional protocol features.  This section defines the meaning of
   well-known extensions but implementations may use extensions defined
   separately as well.

8.2.1.  Compression

   The registered extension token for this compression extension is
   "deflate-stream".

   The extension does not have any per message extension data and it
   does not define the use of any WebSocket reserved bits or op codes.

   Senders using this extension MUST apply RFC 1951 encodings to all
   bytes of the data stream following the handshake including both data
   and control messages.  The data stream MAY include multiple blocks of
   both compressed and uncompressed types as defined by RFC 1951.
   [RFC1951]

   Senders MUST NOT delay the transmission of any portion of a WebSocket
   message because the deflate encoding of the message does not end on a
   byte boundary.  The encodings for adjacent messages MAY appear in the



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   same byte if no delay in transmission is occurred by doing so.


















































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9.  Security considerations

   While this protocol is intended to be used by scripts in Web pages,
   it can also be used directly by hosts.  Such hosts are acting on
   their own behalf, and can therefore send fake "Origin" fields,
   misleading the server.  Servers should therefore be careful about
   assuming that they are talking directly to scripts from known
   origins, and must consider that they might be accessed in unexpected
   ways.  In particular, a server should not trust that any input is
   valid.

   EXAMPLE: For example, if the server uses input as part of SQL
   queries, all input text should be escaped before being passed to the
   SQL server, lest the server be susceptible to SQL injection.


   Servers that are not intended to process input from any Web page but
   only for certain sites should verify the "Origin" field is an origin
   they expect, and should only respond with the corresponding "Sec-
   WebSocket-Origin" if it is an accepted origin.  Servers that only
   accept input from one origin can just send back that value in the
   "Sec-WebSocket-Origin" field, without bothering to check the client's
   value.


   If at any time a server is faced with data that it does not
   understand, or that violates some criteria by which the server
   determines safety of input, or when the server sees a handshake that
   does not correspond to the values the server is expecting (e.g.
   incorrect path or origin), the server should just disconnect.  It is
   always safe to disconnect.


   The biggest security risk when sending text data using this protocol
   is sending data using the wrong encoding.  If an attacker can trick
   the server into sending data encoded as ISO-8859-1 verbatim (for
   instance), rather than encoded as UTF-8, then the attacker could
   inject arbitrary frames into the data stream.


   In addition to endpoints being the target of attacks via WebSockets,
   other parts of web infrastructure, such as proxies, may be the
   subject of an attack.  In particular, an intermediary may interpret a
   WebSocket message from a client as a request, and a message from the
   server as a response to that request.  For instance, an attacker
   could get a browser to establish a connection to its server, get the
   browser to send a message that looks to an intermediary like a GET
   request for a common piece of JavaScript on another domain, and send



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   back a message that is interpreted as a cacheable response to that
   request, thus poisioning the cache for other users.  To prevent this
   attack, messages sent from clients are masked on the wire with a 32-
   bit value, to prevent an attacker from controlling the bits on the
   wire and thus lessen the probability of an attacker being able to
   construct a message that can be misinterpreted by a proxy as a non-
   WebSocket request.












































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10.  IANA considerations

10.1.  Registration of ws: scheme

   A |ws:| URI identifies a WebSocket server and resource name.

   URI scheme name.
      ws

   Status.
      Permanent.

   URI scheme syntax.
      In ABNF terms using the terminals from the URI specifications:
      [RFC5234] [RFC3986]

           "ws" ":" hier-part [ "?" query ]

      The path and query components form the resource name sent to the
      server to identify the kind of service desired.  Other components
      have the meanings described in RFC3986.

   URI scheme semantics.
      The only operation for this scheme is to open a connection using
      the WebSocket protocol.

   Encoding considerations.
      Characters in the host component that are excluded by the syntax
      defined above must be converted from Unicode to ASCII by applying
      the IDNA ToASCII algorithm to the Unicode host name, with both the
      AllowUnassigned and UseSTD3ASCIIRules flags set, and using the
      result of this algorithm as the host in the URI.  [RFC3490]

      Characters in other components that are excluded by the syntax
      defined above must be converted from Unicode to ASCII by first
      encoding the characters as UTF-8 and then replacing the
      corresponding bytes using their percent-encoded form as defined in
      the URI and IRI specification.  [RFC3986] [RFC3987]

   Applications/protocols that use this URI scheme name.
      WebSocket protocol.

   Interoperability considerations.
      None.







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   Security considerations.
      See "Security considerations" section above.

   Contact.
      Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>

   Author/Change controller.
      Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>

   References.
      This document.

10.2.  Registration of wss: scheme

   A |wss:| URI identifies a WebSocket server and resource name, and
   indicates that traffic over that connection is to be encrypted.

   URI scheme name.
      wss

   Status.
      Permanent.

   URI scheme syntax.
      In ABNF terms using the terminals from the URI specifications:
      [RFC5234] [RFC3986]

           "wss" ":" hier-part [ "?" query ]

      The path and query components form the resource name sent to the
      server to identify the kind of service desired.  Other components
      have the meanings described in RFC3986.

   URI scheme semantics.
      The only operation for this scheme is to open a connection using
      the WebSocket protocol, encrypted using TLS.

   Encoding considerations.
      Characters in the host component that are excluded by the syntax
      defined above must be converted from Unicode to ASCII by applying
      the IDNA ToASCII algorithm to the Unicode host name, with both the
      AllowUnassigned and UseSTD3ASCIIRules flags set, and using the
      result of this algorithm as the host in the URI.  [RFC3490]

      Characters in other components that are excluded by the syntax
      defined above must be converted from Unicode to ASCII by first
      encoding the characters as UTF-8 and then replacing the
      corresponding bytes using their percent-encoded form as defined in



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      the URI and IRI specification.  [RFC3986] [RFC3987]

   Applications/protocols that use this URI scheme name.
      WebSocket protocol over TLS.

   Interoperability considerations.
      None.

   Security considerations.
      See "Security considerations" section above.

   Contact.
      Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>

   Author/Change controller.
      Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>

   References.
      This document.

10.3.  Registration of the "WebSocket" HTTP Upgrade keyword

   Name of token.
      WebSocket

   Author/Change controller.
      Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>

   Contact.
      Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>

   References.
      This document.

10.4.  Sec-WebSocket-Key

   This section describes a header field for registration in the
   Permanent Message Header Field Registry.  [RFC3864]

   Header field name
      Sec-WebSocket-Key

   Applicable protocol
      http







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   Status
      reserved; do not use outside WebSocket handshake

   Author/Change controller
      IETF

   Specification document(s)
      This document is the relevant specification.

   Related information
      None.

   The |Sec-WebSocket-Key| header is used in the WebSocket handshake.
   It is sent from the client to the server to provide part of the
   information used by the server to prove that it received a valid
   WebSocket handshake.  This helps ensure that the server does not
   accept connections from non-WebSocket clients (e.g.  HTTP clients)
   that are being abused to send data to unsuspecting WebSocket servers.

10.5.  Sec-WebSocket-Extensions

   This section describes a header field for registration in the
   Permanent Message Header Field Registry.  [RFC3864]

   Header field name
      Sec-WebSocket-Extensions

   Applicable protocol
      http

   Status
      reserved; do not use outside WebSocket handshake

   Author/Change controller
      IETF

   Specification document(s)
      This document is the relevant specification.

   Related information
      None.

   The |Sec-WebSocket-Extensions| header is used in the WebSocket
   handshake.  It is initially sent from the client to the server, and
   then subsequently sent from the servver to the client, to agree on a
   set of protocol-level extensions to use during the connection.





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10.6.  Sec-WebSocket-Accept

   This section describes a header field for registration in the
   Permanent Message Header Field Registry.  [RFC3864]

   Header field name
      Sec-WebSocket-Accept

   Applicable protocol
      http

   Status
      reserved; do not use outside WebSocket handshake

   Author/Change controller
      IETF

   Specification document(s)
      This document is the relevant specification.

   Related information
      None.

   The |Sec-WebSocket-Accept| header is used in the WebSocket handshake.
   It is sent from the server to the client to confirm that the server
   is willing to initiate the connection.

10.7.  Sec-WebSocket-Origin

   This section describes a header field for registration in the
   Permanent Message Header Field Registry.  [RFC3864]

   Header field name
      Sec-WebSocket-Origin

   Applicable protocol
      http

   Status
      reserved; do not use outside WebSocket handshake

   Author/Change controller
      IETF

   Specification document(s)
      This document is the relevant specification.





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   Related information
      None.

   The |Sec-WebSocket-Origin| header is used in the WebSocket handshake.
   It is sent from the server to the client to confirm the origin of the
   script that opened the connection.  This enables user agents to
   verify that the server is willing to serve the script that opened the
   connection.

10.8.  Sec-WebSocket-Protocol

   This section describes a header field for registration in the
   Permanent Message Header Field Registry.  [RFC3864]

   Header field name
      Sec-WebSocket-Protocol

   Applicable protocol
      http

   Status
      reserved; do not use outside WebSocket handshake

   Author/Change controller
      IETF

   Specification document(s)
      This document is the relevant specification.

   Related information
      None.

   The |Sec-WebSocket-Protocol| header is used in the WebSocket
   handshake.  It is sent from the client to the server and back from
   the server to the client to confirm the subprotocol of the
   connection.  This enables scripts to both select a subprotocol and be
   sure that the server agreed to serve that subprotocol.

10.9.  Sec-WebSocket-Version

   This section describes a header field for registration in the
   Permanent Message Header Field Registry.  [RFC3864]

   Header field name
      Sec-WebSocket-Version






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   Applicable protocol
      http

   Status
      reserved; do not use outside WebSocket handshake

   Author/Change controller
      IETF

   Specification document(s)
      This document is the relevant specification.

   Related information
      None.

   The |Sec-WebSocket-Version| header is used in the WebSocket
   handshake.  It is sent from the client to the server to indicate the
   protocol version of the connection.  This enables servers to
   correctly interpret the handshake and subsequent data being sent from
   the data, and close the connection if the server cannot interpret
   that data in a safe manner.






























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11.  Using the WebSocket protocol from other specifications

   The WebSocket protocol is intended to be used by another
   specification to provide a generic mechanism for dynamic author-
   defined content, e.g. in a specification defining a scripted API.

   Such a specification first needs to "establish a WebSocket
   connection", providing that algorithm with:

   o  The destination, consisting of a /host/ and a /port/.

   o  A /resource name/, which allows for multiple services to be
      identified at one host and port.

   o  A /secure/ flag, which is true if the connection is to be
      encrypted, and false otherwise.

   o  An ASCII serialization of an origin that is being made responsible
      for the connection.  [I-D.ietf-websec-origin]

   o  Optionally a string identifying a protocol that is to be layered
      over the WebSocket connection.

   The /host/, /port/, /resource name/, and /secure/ flag are usually
   obtained from a URI using the steps to parse a WebSocket URI's
   components.  These steps fail if the URI does not specify a
   WebSocket.

   If a connection can be established, then it is said that the
   "WebSocket connection is established".

   If at any time the connection is to be closed, then the specification
   needs to use the "close the WebSocket connection" algorithm.

   When the connection is closed, for any reason including failure to
   establish the connection in the first place, it is said that the
   "WebSocket connection is closed".

   While a connection is open, the specification will need to handle the
   cases when "a WebSocket message has been received" with text /data/.

   To send some text /data/ to an open connection, the specification
   needs to "send /data/ using the WebSocket".








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12.  Acknowledgements

   Special thanks are due to Ian Hickson, who was the original author
   and editor of this protocol.  The initial design of this
   specification benefitted from the participation of many people in the
   WHATWG and WHATWG mailing list.  Contributions to that specification
   are not tracked by section, but a list of all who contributed to that
   specification is given in the WHATWG HTML specification at
   http://whatwg.org/html5.

   Special thanks also to John Tamplin for providing a significant
   amount of text for the Data Framing section of this specification.

   Special thanks also to Adam Barth for providing a significant amount
   of text and background research for the Data Masking section of this
   specification.



































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13.  Appendix: List of Changes

   This section is not normative.  This section was added at the request
   of the chairs to help track changes between versions.  This section
   will be removed from the final version of this document.

13.1.  Changes from -05 to -06

   Two major areas were changed in this draft.  The closing handshake
   was clarified and re-written to add in terminology matching the API
   specification.  The close frame was given an optional status code to
   indicate closure reason, and the notion of a body indicating which
   side initiated the close removed.  Aside from this, many areas were
   clarified in areas previously ambiguous, though the meaning should
   remain consistent with the intent of previous drafts.  Certain other
   material changes that are not as large as those previously mentioned
   are listed below, though for a complete list readers are reminded
   that a tool is available to diff two versions at
   http://tools.ietf.org/tools/rfcdiff/.  The list below is my attempt
   at a changelog, not an authoritative guarantee, plese use the diff
   tool for a complete list.

   o  Clarified that Sec-WebSocket-Origin is optional for non-browser
      clients.

   o  Clarified the semantics of the closing handshake to be that the
      connection is closed when an endpoint has both sent and received a
      close frame.

   o  Changed text around final HTTP responses and the WebSocket
      handshake.

   o  Removed Sec-WebSocket-Nonce

   o  Attempted to convert use of URL to URI terminology.  (Ticket 41)

   o  Attempted to resolve Ticket 42 re: HTML spec reference.

   o  Edited potentially misleadin text around the word "even" in
      Section 1.6 and what applied to XHR vs more broadly.

   o  Removed non-material text from 1.8 about establishing a
      connection.

   o  Clarified text in the section about fragmentation (4.4).  No
      material changes, clarification only.





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   o  Clarified that control frames (4.5) may be interjected in the
      middle of a fragmented message.

   o  Clarified what was meant by the body of a close frame.

   o  Clarified the intent in 5.1 that there be only one connection in
      CONNECTING state.

   o  Cleaned 1.5 up to note that compression was already introduced in
      the spec, left in multiplexing as a future definition.

   o  Randomly selected randomly - typo fix.

   o  Added a change log in the appendix.

   o  Included in security considerations a description of the attack
      presented by Adam Barth.

   o  Changed some referneces from Web-Socket to WebSocket

   o  Clarified in 3.1 that only ws and wss are valid options, and that
      other schemes should result in a failure.

   o  Various cleanups around terminology of "host", "endpoint", and
      "user agent".

   o  Defined status codes and reserved ranges for close frames.

   o  Added text that a TCP connection should be shut down cleanly.

   o  Clarified whether the upgrade header exactly equaled upgrade or
      contained an upgrade token.



















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14.  Normative References

   [ANSI.X3-4.1986]
              American National Standards Institute, "Coded Character
              Set - 7-bit American Standard Code for Information
              Interchange", ANSI X3.4, 1986.

   [FIPS.180-2.2002]
              National Institute of Standards and Technology, "Secure
              Hash Standard", FIPS PUB 180-2, August 2002, <http://
              csrc.nist.gov/publications/fips/fips180-2/fips180-2.pdf>.

   [RFC1951]  Deutsch, P., "DEFLATE Compressed Data Format Specification
              version 1.3", RFC 1951, May 1996.

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.

   [RFC2246]  Dierks, T. and C. Allen, "The TLS Protocol Version 1.0",
              RFC 2246, January 1999.

   [RFC2616]  Fielding, R., Gettys, J., Mogul, J., Frystyk, H.,
              Masinter, L., Leach, P., and T. Berners-Lee, "Hypertext
              Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1", RFC 2616, June 1999.

   [RFC3490]  Faltstrom, P., Hoffman, P., and A. Costello,
              "Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA)",
              RFC 3490, March 2003.

   [RFC3548]  Josefsson, S., "The Base16, Base32, and Base64 Data
              Encodings", RFC 3548, July 2003.

   [RFC3629]  Yergeau, F., "UTF-8, a transformation format of ISO
              10646", STD 63, RFC 3629, November 2003.

   [RFC3864]  Klyne, G., Nottingham, M., and J. Mogul, "Registration
              Procedures for Message Header Fields", BCP 90, RFC 3864,
              September 2004.

   [RFC3986]  Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and L. Masinter, "Uniform
              Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax", STD 66,
              RFC 3986, January 2005.

   [RFC3987]  Duerst, M. and M. Suignard, "Internationalized Resource
              Identifiers (IRIs)", RFC 3987, January 2005.

   [RFC4366]  Blake-Wilson, S., Nystrom, M., Hopwood, D., Mikkelsen, J.,
              and T. Wright, "Transport Layer Security (TLS)



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              Extensions", RFC 4366, April 2006.

   [RFC5234]  Crocker, D. and P. Overell, "Augmented BNF for Syntax
              Specifications: ABNF", STD 68, RFC 5234, January 2008.

   [I-D.ietf-httpstate-cookie]
              Barth, A., "HTTP State Management Mechanism",
              draft-ietf-httpstate-cookie-20 (work in progress),
              December 2010.

   [I-D.ietf-websec-origin]
              Barth, A., "The Web Origin Concept",
              draft-ietf-websec-origin-00 (work in progress),
              December 2010.

   [WSAPI]    Hickson, I., "The Web Sockets API", August 2010,
              <http://dev.w3.org/html5/websockets/>.


































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Author's Address

   Ian Fette
   Google, Inc.

   Email: ifette+ietf@google.com
   URI:   http://www.ianfette.com/












































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