Explore uWebSockets as a ws alternative

[privatenumber]

Description

I learned about https://github.com/uNetworking/uWebSockets.js which is a faster alternative to ws.

Bun uses a fork of it for WebSockets, and based on these HTTP server benchmarks, uWebSockets.js via Node is actually faster than bun.

More benchmarks: uNetworking/uWebSockets#1415

I'm not sure how much of a bottleneck ws is, but it may be worth exploring.

Suggested solution

Explore adopting uWebSockets.js

Alternative

No response

Additional context

No response

Validations

• Follow our Code of Conduct
• Read the Contributing Guidelines.
• Read the docs.
• Check that there isn't already an issue that request the same feature to avoid creating a duplicate.

[rtritto]

Other benchmarks:

• https://github.com/uNetworking/uWebSockets/tree/master/benchmarks
• https://web-frameworks-benchmark.netlify.app/result?l=javascript
• https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#hw=ph&test=fortune&section=data-r22&l=zik0sf-cn3

Reference to Vite v6 discussion: #15886 (comment)

[sapphi-red]

I checked uWebSockets.js and I think it has the following problems to be used in Vite:

• lack of minor platform support: it only supports Tier 1 platforms and there aren't any fallback implementations like we have with esbuild
• does not have a builtin way to only install the binary needed for the platform it is ran in (e.g. optionalDependencies)

Even if these problems were solved, it has a big package size even for a single platform (5MB; ws is 143kB), so it would need to improve the perf significantly to make it worth.

[rtritto]

Thanks for the checks, I opened uNetworking/uWebSockets.js#1120

Second point can be (partially) achieved with uNetworking/uWebSockets.js#1112

[sapphi-red]

Closing this as I guess the WS server perf is not the bottleneck for Vite. But feel free to create a new issue if you have proved that that is a bottleneck even for some cases.