NGINX Announces Support for WebSocket Protocol

Related: Cloud, News

Nginx Inc., the high performance web company, today announced support for the WebSocket Protocol in the latest iteration of NGINX version 1.3. Available immediately, the functionality of the WebSocket Protocol is accessible within the core product. WebSocket provides exciting capabilities for web developers and service providers offering platforms as a service (PaaS), who are challenged by an ever increasing demand for high performance and low latency communications.

NGINX is wildly popular web server software, powering almost 30% of the world's busiest sites and 44% of the sites on Amazon's AWS. Consequently, there is great demand to support WebSocket across the NGINX community. WebSocket proxy implementation allows users to extend and simplify the use of NGINX for the development and support of real-time web applications and platforms.

CloudBees and Apcera were the co-sponsors of this project.

"WebSocket provides functionality critical to future web and mobile application development. Instead of developing a proprietary, in-house solution, Apcera happily co-sponsored its development in a proven, rock-solid product like NGINX - which we'll be fully supporting in our next-generation cloud platform," said Derek Collison, CEO and Founder of Apcera.

"We are very pleased to partner with NGINX to provide WebSocket support for CloudBees customers," said Sacha Labourey, CEO, CloudBees. "WebSocket opens up whole new user experiences and capabilities, but without first-class support from the web proxying layer, it's mostly lived in demo-land. WebSocket support is now fully integrated into the CloudBees Platform, making it easily accessible for our real-world users. No APIs or integration issues - it just works."

Support for WebSocket also reduces moving parts for web engineers, eliminates unnecessary work for developers and opens up new opportunities to run applications with live connections. For example, applications that handle real-time and dynamic data like stock prices and scores from sporting events will now be able to ensure that subscribers are promptly receiving the most accurate and up-to-date data. With support for WebSocket in NGINX developers will no longer need to implement complex workarounds on top of traditional HTTP communications.

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