Each binary packet results in two packets, and two websocket frames

[darrachequesne]

As described here, currently:

socket.send('hello', new Buffer('1234'));
// results in the following packet
var packet = {
  type: 5,
  data: ['hello', <buffer>],
  nsp: '/',
  // id: <id> (if used with an acknowledgement)
};
// that gets encoded as two packets by socket.io-parser
[
  encodeAsString(packetWithoutBuffer),
  <buffer> 
]

The thing is, those two packets are sent as two different frames (here), which isn't really efficient (even if a websocket emit does not need a new TCP handshake).

One possible solution would be to concatenate those two packets in one buffer:

var stringPacket = encodeAsString(packetWithoutBuffer);
<stringPacket length><stringPacket as buffer><buffer> 

Yet that would be a breaking change, and a special case when handling binary data.

Related:

• execution time for encodeAsBinary #60: execution time for encodeAsBinary
• Getting three frames instead of two between client/server socket.io#2444: Getting three frames instead of two between client/server
• 358 bytes payload takes almost double mobile traffic socket.io#2646: 358 bytes payload takes almost double mobile traffic

[darrachequesne]

Closing, since one will now be able use a custom parser, like socket.io-msgpack-parser.

[nybbs2003]

👍