104 | Real-Time Revolution: Diving into the World of WebSockets and Long Polling

September 12, 2025

Real-Time Revolution: Diving into the World of WebSockets and Long Polling

Introduction

Modern users expect web applications to work as fast and responsive as native software. Chats, stock quotes, collaborative document editing — all these scenarios require instant data exchange. In this article, we’ll break down how Long Polling works, why it was replaced by WebSockets, and how to properly configure these technologies on popular web servers.

The Real-Time Problem and the First Solution: Long Polling

HTTP was originally designed for the request-response model: the client contacts the server, the server replies, and the connection closes. For dynamic applications, this is inconvenient.