Websockets through Stunnel is giving random bytes.
- by user16682
I have several servers set up for a web application that I am developing. One is a load balancing server, and I'm running a php WebSockets server on this balancer. The website that I am developing on uses ssl, so I have my WebSockets running through a wss uri connecting directly to the balancer, where I have set up stunnel4 to decrypt all traffic at a certain port and re-rout it to my php WebSockets server.
This works fine when it comes down to connecting to my server. That's not the problem. The problem occurs when I try to send data to the server. Occasionally when I try this, stunnel does not appear to be decrypting the data properly. I get garbage characters in my termanal running the server: what appear to be completely random bytes. This can sometimes go on for several consecutive messages that I send before abruptly working again.
It is very erratic and unpredictable. Sometimes I refresh the page, and all the messages work perfectly. Sometimes the WebSocket connects and I have to wait 5-10 seconds before any messages I send are interpreted properly by the server. Other times I can't send any messages at all, because they all end up as garbage.
I believe this is a stunnel problem, but I am not certain. Does anybody have any experience with this? I would like a more predictable server if I can get it.
Some more information:
This occurs extensively in Chrome, not quite as much in FireFox, and never in Safari.
The php server I am using is phpws http://code.google.com/p/phpws/
-- On the WebSocket connection, this server would sometimes detect that the header was only 1 byte in size, the first byte of the WebSockets header. I had to modify the server to flush the buffer ever time this occurred so that it would reliably connect.
