WebSockets and Long Polling

Question

I have a chat room application that has been implemented in C# with SignalR WebSockets capabilities and hosted on Azure so it connects using WebSockets. I've also Implemented the same application to use long polling as a transport method.

What I want to do now is find "tests" as to which I can compare the network traffic and latency issues (or any other major differences) on both applications. One suggested evaluation for a comparison is the initial connection of the unnecessary network throughput but not quite sure how to go about that.

Any comments and suggestions would be highly appreciated.

Answer 1

Would a simple latency display be enough ? An easy way to do this is :

• implement a client to server call in which you send a browser-computed Date.now()

• make the server immediately call a method in the client, sending back the value unchanged

• the client computes the difference Date.now() - receivedDate. You now know the time interval for a back and forth request client->server->client.