QUIC support

[dzcpy]

It would be super awesome if socket.io can use QUIC as one of its transport layers.

[darrachequesne]

That would be awesome indeed 👍

Related:

• quic: part 3... initial quic implementation nodejs/node#32379
• https://nodejs.org/api/quic.html

[darrachequesne]

Bad news:

• the experimental support for QUIC was removed from Node.js: quic: remove experimental quic nodejs/node#37067

Good news:

• QUIC has been approved as RFC-9000: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc9000/
• a new implementation is being worked on: quic: add quic nodejs/node#38233

[reececomo]

@darrachequesne just checking in — any new developments on the node support side (two years later)?

[darrachequesne]

@reececomo it's coming: https://github.com/socketio/engine.io/releases/tag/6.5.0

We'll use the @fails-components/webtransport package for now, until support lands on Node.js: nodejs/node#44325

[darrachequesne]

WebTransport is now supported: https://github.com/socketio/socket.io/releases/tag/4.7.0

We'll add a guide to test it with a self-signed certificate in local environments (soon).

[reececomo]

Nice one @darrachequesne!

[darrachequesne]

The guide: https://socket.io/get-started/webtransport

Any feedback is welcome!

[reececomo]

That is awesome, great job!

Currently we're using geckos.io (WebRTC datachannel), and interested to see if QUIC/webtransport offers any performance improvement/reduces packet overhead.

[reececomo]

Might be interesting to see a side-by-side comparison between websockets and webtransport with a realtime game/sim (i.e. like @yandeu's here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEEBsq3eQmg)

[frabera]

WebTransport is now supported: https://github.com/socketio/socket.io/releases/tag/4.7.0

We'll add a guide to test it with a self-signed certificate in local environments (soon).

Awesome! Is it possible/planned to use datagrams instead of streams?

[reececomo]

• https://caniuse.com/webtransport
• https://caniuse.com/?search=quic (HTTP/3)

Interestingly Desktop Safari and a handful of mobile browsers say they support QUIC (HTTP/3) but not Webtransport. Not fully across the particulars here, we'll continue with WebRTC data channels in the meantime.