title: Bootstrapping WebSockets with HTTP/2 abbrev: I-D docname: draft-mcmanus-httpbis-h2-websockets-03 date: 2017-11-15 category: std area: Applications and Real Time ipr: trust200902 pi: toc: yes tocdepth: 4 sortrefs: yes symrefs: yes
ins: P. McManus name: Patrick McManus organization: Mozilla email: [email protected]
normative: RFC2119: RFC6454: RFC6455: RFC7230: RFC7540:
--- abstract
This document defines a mechanism for running the WebSocket Protocol {{RFC6455}} over a single stream of an HTTP/2 connection.
--- middle
The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) provides compatible resource level semantics across different versions but it does not offer compatibility at the connection management level. Other protocols, such as WebSockets, that rely on connection management details of HTTP must be updated for new versions of HTTP.
The WebSocket Protocol {{RFC6455}} uses the HTTP/1.1 {{RFC7230}} Upgrade mechanism to transition a TCP connection from HTTP into a WebSocket connection. A different approach must be taken with HTTP/2 {{RFC7540}}. HTTP/2 does not allow connection wide header and status codes such as the Upgrade and Connection request headers or the 101 response code due to its multiplexing nature. These are all required by the {{RFC6455}} opening handshake.
Being able to bootstrap WebSockets from HTTP/2 allows one TCP connection to be shared by both protocols and extends HTTP/2's more efficient use of the network to WebSockets.
This document extends the HTTP/2 CONNECT method. The extension allows the substitution of a new protocol name to connect to rather than the external host normally used by CONNECT. The result is a tunnel on a single HTTP/2 stream that can carry data for WebSockets (or any other protocol). The other streams on the connection may carry more extended CONNECT tunnels, traditional HTTP/2 data, or a mixture of both.
This tunneled stream will be multiplexed with other regular streams on the connection and enjoys the normal priority, cancellation, and flow control features of HTTP/2.
Streams that successfully establish a WebSocket connection using a tunneled stream and the modifications to the opening handshake defined in this document then use the traditional WebSocket Protocol treating the stream as if were the TCP connection in that specification.
In this document, the key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14, {{RFC2119}}.
This document adds a new SETTINGS Parameter to those defined by {{RFC7540}} Section 6.5.2.
The new parameter is ENABLE_CONNECT_PROTOCOL (type = 0x8). The value of the parameter MUST be 0 or 1.
Upon receipt of ENABLE_CONNECT_PROTOCOL with a value of 1 a client MAY use the Extended CONNECT definition of this document when creating new streams. Receipt of this parameter by a server does not have any impact.
A sender MUST NOT send a ENABLE_CONNECT_PROTOCOL parameter with the value of 0 after previously sending a value of 1.
The use of a SETTINGS Parameter to opt-in to an otherwise incompatible protocol change is a use of "Extending HTTP/2" defined by section 5.5 of {{RFC7540}}. If a client were to use the provisions of the extended CONNECT method defined in this document without first receiving a ENABLE_CONNECT_PROTOCOL parameter with the value of 1 it would be a protocol violation.
The CONNECT Method of {{RFC7540}} Section 8.3 is modified in the following ways:
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A new pseudo-header :protocol MAY be included on request HEADERS indicating the desired protocol to be spoken on the tunnel created by CONNECT. The pseudo-header is single valued and contains a value from the HTTP Upgrade Token Registry defined by {{RFC7230}}.
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On requests bearing the :protocol pseudo-header, the :scheme and :path pseudo-header fields MUST be included.
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On requests bearing the :protocol pseudo-header, the :authority pseudo-header field is interpreted according to {{RFC7540}} Section 8.1.2.3 instead of {{RFC7540}} Section 8.3. In particular the server MUST not make a new TCP connection to the host and port indicated by the :authority.
Upon receiving a CONNECT request bearing the :protocol pseudo-header the server establishes a tunnel to another service of the protocol type indicated by the pseudo-header. This service may or may not be co-located with the server.
The pseudo-header :protocol MUST be included in the CONNECT request and it MUST have a value of websocket to initiate a WebSocket connection on an HTTP/2 stream. Other HTTP request and response headers, such as those for manipulating cookies, may be included in the HEADERS with the CONNECT :method as usual. This request replaces the GET based request in {{RFC6455}} and is used to process the WebSockets opening handshake.
The scheme of the Target URI {{RFC7230}} MUST be https for wss schemed WebSockets and http for ws schemed WebSockets. The websocket URI is still used for proxy autoconfiguration.
{{RFC6455}} requires the use of Connection and Upgrade headers that are not part of HTTP/2. They MUST not be included in the CONNECT request defined here.
{{RFC6455}} requires the use of a Host header which is also not part of HTTP/2. The Host information is conveyed as part of the :authority pseudo-header which is required on every HTTP/2 transaction.
Implementations using this extended CONNECT to bootstrap WebSockets do not do the processing of the {{RFC6455}} Sec-WebSocket-Key and Sec-WebSocket-Accept headers as that functionality has been superceded by the :protocol pseudo-header.
The Sec-WebSocket-Version, Origin {{RFC6454}}, Sec-WebSocket-Protocol, and Sec-WebSocket-Extensions headers are used on the CONNECT request and response headers in the same way as defined in {{RFC6455}}. Note that HTTP/1 header names were case insensitive and HTTP/2 requires they be encoded as lower case.
After successfully processing the opening handshake the peers should proceed with The WebSocket Protocol {{RFC6455}} using the HTTP/2 stream from the CONNECT transaction as if it were the TCP connection referred to in {{RFC6455}}. The state of the WebSocket connection at this point is OPEN as defined by {{RFC6455}} Section 4.1.
[[ From Client ]] [[ From Server ]]
SETTINGS
ENABLE_CONNECT_PROTOCOL = 1
HEADERS + END_HEADERS
:method = CONNECT
:protocol = websocket
:scheme = https
:path = /chat
:authority = server.example.com:443
sec-websocket-protocol = chat, superchat
sec-websocket-extensions = permessage-deflate
sec-websocket-version = 13
origin = http://www.example.com
HEADERS + END_HEADERS
:status = 200
sec-websocket-protocol = chat
DATA
WebSocket Data
DATA + END_STREAM
WebSocket Data
DATA + END_STREAM
WebSocket Data
A more native integration with HTTP/2 is certainly possible with larger additions to HTTP/2. This design was selected to minimize the solution complexity while still addressing the primary concern of running HTTP/2 and WebSockets concurrently.
This document does not change how WebSockets interacts with HTTP proxies. If a client wishing to speak WebSockets connects via HTTP/2 to a HTTP proxy it should continue to use a traditional (i.e. not with a :protocol pseudo-header) CONNECT to tunnel through that proxy to the WebSocket server via HTTP.
The resulting version of HTTP on that tunnel determines whether WebSockets is initiated directly or via a modified CONNECT request described in this document.
{{RFC6455}} ensures that non WebSockets clients, especially XMLHttpRequest based clients, cannot make a WebSocket connection. Its primary mechanism for doing that is the use of Sec- prefixed request headers that cannot be created by XMLHttpRequest based clients. This specification addresses that concern in two ways:
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The CONNECT method is prohibited from being used by XMLHttpRequest
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The use of a pseudo-header is something that is connection specific and HTTP/2 does not ever allow to be created outside of the protocol stack.
This document establishes a entry for the HTTP/2 Settings Registry that was established by {{RFC7540}} Section 11.3
Name: ENABLE_CONNECT_PROTOCOL
Code: 0x8
Initial Value: 0
Specification: This document
The 2017 HTTP Workshop had a very productive discussion that helped determine the key problem and acceptable level of solution complexity.