WebTCP: Making TCP Connections From Browser | Hacker News Reader

WebTCP: Making TCP Connections From Browser

artemyankov.com

50 pointsyankoff31 comments

This is definitely a cool hack, but please be mindful of the security considerations of deploying something like this on the internet. Running an open proxy that allows any client to perform arbitrary TCP connections bouncing through your servers is a bad idea.

First, you need to worry about the security implications of each internal server that you expose intentionally. Just how much damage can someone with direct access to your Redis instance cause? Better read http://redis.io/topics/security, and repeat this for every other service you want to expose.

Second, you are going to effectively need a whitelist of allowed connections, either in the proxy, or at the firewall level (which most people are going to forget to configure, if they even know how). Without that you are going to allow arbitrary bypass of your firewall for internal services, as well as effectively running an open proxy for anyone looking to bounce their malicious traffic through your server.

Yeah, just look at all the havoc caused by anonymous FXP in the '90s

So, TCP over HTTP, which is a protocol built on top of TCP. Does anyone see that this is rather silly?

If you want a client-side app that uses TCP, why must you do it over the web? The appeal of write-once-run-everywhere?

Well, you didn't read the post apparently and only a title :(

I actually did. I was quite interested in the redis example. For about 10 seconds, which I then went "wtf is this useful for?"

We really need to stop reinventing the wheel

What would you use to achieve the same thing with Redis?

The XY Problem http://www.perlmonks.org/index.pl?node_id=542341

I wouldn't. I'd make a HTTP call to the server, and let the server handle it. (i.e. your "what's so different from the backend method")?

Yep, and i wrote about differences to such approach in the post. Don't get me wrong, this is definitely a hack, I'm not saying people should stop doing it the old way.

Likewise. While I appreciate the concept of a bridge (I'm a strong believer that the fastest app is the app that does practically nothing at all, and I can see the benefit of using a TCP-bridge like thing to make something faster), I just think we should not be reinventing the wheel.

That is to say, if you need a TCP connection to any server, you probably should not be implementing it over HTTP (well, this is where definitions get difficult, since you know, HTTP is technically TCP. Fuck)

REST is far more appropriate for databases.

Pub/sub is well catered for by socket.io (websockets).

This glue belongs on the server.

If I did need arbitrary TCP connections my first thought would be a websocket proxy...

it's not about pure tcp, as i get it - it allows you communicate from browser directly (via webtcp server as a bridge) with any servers such as redis, mongodb, rabbitmq and so on.

WebBrowser --- data ---> WebTCP bridge (translate data to servers) --- data ---> redis/rabbitmq/any_tcp(and i think udp also possible?)_server_even_smtp

It's not TCP over HTTP, that would require a TCP stack. It's the io bytestream from a specific TCP connection, shuttled over HTTP.

It's not entirely bogus, just mostly so. I really dislike this whole "the internet == the web" way of thinking, though.

On the contrary, this sort of things allows us to write clients in a uniform way. It will be nice to be able to debug the redis client in a jsfiddle. :)

By this argument, "uniformity" means we should then port the linux kernel to javascript so that we can debug it in jsfiddle.

Down that path lies madness.

What's wrong with writing a kernel in JavaScript? This would actually be quite valuable as a pedagogical tool.

It uses Websockets, which are only HTTP for the handshake: the rest of the connection is just a TCP stream.

So it's really more like a NAT bridge.

I think this is a great idea. From the moment I heard of WebSockets I was disappointed it was only a thing between the sockets-capable-web-server and the client and not a real TCP connection to wherever you want. This solves stuff :) However, I think that you should keep an eye on the possible security implications (ex. fooling the same origin policy, using your websockets proxy as a hub to attack other systems on the internet, ...)

Doesn't websockify do this better?

It looks like with websockify you have to run a server with their wrapper to make it work

It looks like this also requires a server with a wrapper. The difference is that websockify is more efficient.

Isn't the major benefit of WebSockets that is actually has a fair chance to pass through all the crazy proxies and gateways installed in every office, home and coffe shop, that would otherwise filter any non-HTTP traffic?

So make a websocket proxy...

This is just what I need to complete the in-browser app I'm building to navigate and read these new hypertext pages I'm creating. I've developed a markup language that will let you reference any of these documents from any other. The app that lets you view them is going to work in any browser that supports WebTCP, too, for the ultimate in cross-platform compatibility!

If more web services supported CORS, pure client side apps would be way easier to do and less kludgy than via proxy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-origin_resource_sharing

Nice hack (although I would put this in the category of 'workaround'). The idea is cool, but I can already imagine all sorts of debugging nightmares with this approach. To begin with, how do we find out where the connection is broken (Is it the client socket or the proxy socket)? Bad connections have different reasons (in C terms: ECONNRESET, EWOULDBLOCK, ENETUNREACH, etc); are these specific reasons propagated verbatim? What about flow control between proxy and client?

There is always a chasm between whipping up a cool hack and making something usable. This hack needs a long bridge in between.

This is an awesome hack. We really need real TCP connections from the browser. Until then this looks like a great workaround. I eagerly await the day we can use the browser for everything we do (did?) with Desktop apps.

We built a simple proof-of-concept library that lets you use a web app as the GUI for native code, if anyone would be interested.

Yes please!

You may want to take a look at browserver

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4366555 http://browserver.org/

Chrome (and I believe Firefox too) has a TCP socket API, but it's only exposed to Chrome apps and extensions.

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