compression_playground

README

This is a sample simulation of football match where the entire state is sent into WebSocket connection upon every match event. The example is not very idiomatic because we try to simulate various modes thus several different files were required. In practice, you will have JSON or Protobuf case only, and there is no need to tweak behaviour over URL params like we do here.

The goal was to compare different compression strategies for WebSocket data transfer. Please note, that results depend a lot on the data you send. You may get absolutely different results for your data. Still we hope this example gives some insights on how to choose the best compression strategy and what to expect from Centrifuge.

Results with different configurations for total data sent over the interface from server to client, caught with WireShark filter:

tcp.srcport == 8000 && websocket

Protocol	Compression	Delta	Delay	Bytes sent	Percentage
JSON over JSON	No	No	0	40251	100.0
JSON over JSON	Yes	No	0	15669	38.93
JSON over JSON	No	Yes	0	6043	15.01
JSON over JSON	Yes	Yes	0	5360	13.32
JSON over Protobuf	No	No	0	39180	97.34
JSON over Protobuf	Yes	No	0	15542	38.61
JSON over Protobuf	No	Yes	0	4287	10.65
JSON over Protobuf	Yes	Yes	0	4126	10.25
Protobuf over Protobuf	No	No	0	16562	41.15
Protobuf over Protobuf	Yes	No	0	13115	32.58
Protobuf over Protobuf	No	Yes	0	4382	10.89
Protobuf over Protobuf	Yes	Yes	0	4473	11.11
JSON over JSON	Yes	Yes	200ms	2060	5.12
JSON over Protobuf	Yes	Yes	200ms	2008	4.99
Protobuf over Protobuf	Yes	Yes	200ms	2315	5.75

Note: since we send JSON over Protobuf, the JSON size is the same as the JSON over JSON case. In this case Centrifugal protocol gives lower overhead, but the main part comes from the JSON payload size. Another advantage of JSON over Protobuf is that we are not forced to use base64 encoding for delta case.