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14.13 Real-Time Systems, WebSockets & Event Streaming
1. What It Is in Plain Words
Real-time systems provide immediate, bidirectional or push-based data synchronization between servers and browsers without requiring the user to refresh the page or poll repeatedly.
2. Real-Time Telemetry Topology in TruthGuard
3. Real-Time Transport Protocols Compared
| Protocol | Directionality | Protocol | Reconnection Handling | Overhead | Fit with TruthGuard |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Server-Sent Events (SSE) | Unidirectional (Server -> Client) | HTTP/2 | Built-in browser retry | Very Low | Optimal for Live Threat Feeds |
| WebSockets | Full-Duplex (Bidirectional) | TCP Upgrade | Requires custom heartbeat | Low | Best for Collaborative Canvas |
| Short Polling | Unidirectional (Client -> Server) | HTTP/1.1 | N/A | High (Repeated headers) | Outdated |
| Long Polling | Emulated Push | HTTP/1.1 | Handled on connection close | Moderate | Fallback only |
4. Connection Scaling & The Pub/Sub Backplane
When thousands of analysts connect to real-time incident rooms across multiple load-balanced server nodes:
- The Problem: Analyst A connected to Server 1 cannot receive an alert emitted by Analyst B connected to Server 2 without a shared messaging bus.
- The Solution (Redis Pub/Sub): Server nodes subscribe to a shared Redis cluster (
PUBLISH incident:alerts <payload>). When any edge node processes a new threat, Redis broadcasts it instantly across all connected nodes to reach the target analysts.
5. 30-Second Spoken Interview Answer
"For real-time incident telemetry, we recommend Server-Sent Events over HTTP/2 for unidirectional alert streams because SSE natively reconnects through firewalls without the connection upgrade overhead of WebSockets.
To scale concurrent connections across multiple backend instances, we use Redis Pub/Sub as our horizontal backplane, ensuring that an alert broadcast on one server node reaches analysts connected to any other node in under 5 milliseconds."