Network Web Socket Proxy Discovery & Service Advertisement

Named Websockets uses multicast DNS-SD (i.e. Zeroconf/Bonjour) to discover network channels on the local network. The proxy connections that result from this process between Named Web Socket Proxies are used to transport Web Socket messages between different network peers using the same channel name in the local network.

Named Web Socket channels all use the DNS-SD service type _nws._tcp with a unique channel id (e.g. 2049847123) and include a path attribute in the TXT record corresponding to the Web Socket's absolute endpoint path (e.g. path=/myChannel). From these advertisements it is possible to resolve Named Web Socket endpoint URLs that remote proxies can use to connect with each other.

When a new network Web Socket is created then the local Named Web Sockets Proxy must notify (i.e. 'ping') all other Named Web Socket Proxies in the local network about this newly created channel via the DNS-SD broadcast.

When a remote Named Web Sockets Proxy detects a new network on the multicast DNS-SD port then it immediately establishes a connection to that Named Web Socket's URL and then creates its own new network Web Socket to advertise back (i.e. 'pong') to other peers.

These processes repeats on all Named Web Socket Proxies whenever they receive a previously unseen 'ping' or 'pong' Named Web Socket advertisement broadcast.

To learn more about the service discovery security and encryption that Named Web Sockets uses click here.