Socket.IO vs nginx

Overview

NGINX

Stacks115.0K

Followers61.9K

Votes5.5K

GitHub Stars28.4K

Forks7.6K

Socket.IO

Stacks13.6K

Followers11.0K

Votes776

nginx vs Socket.IO: What are the differences?

What is nginx? A high performance free open source web server powering busiest sites on the Internet. nginx [engine x] is an HTTP and reverse proxy server, as well as a mail proxy server, written by Igor Sysoev. According to Netcraft nginx served or proxied 30.46% of the top million busiest sites in Jan 2018.

What is Socket.IO? Realtime application framework (Node.JS server). Socket.IO enables real-time bidirectional event-based communication. It works on every platform, browser or device, focusing equally on reliability and speed.

nginx and Socket.IO are primarily classified as "Web Servers" and "Realtime Backend / API" tools respectively.

"High-performance http server", "Performance" and "Easy to configure" are the key factors why developers consider nginx; whereas "Real-time", "Event-based communication" and "Node.js" are the primary reasons why Socket.IO is favored.

nginx and Socket.IO are both open source tools. It seems that Socket.IO with 46.9K GitHub stars and 8.54K forks on GitHub has more adoption than nginx with 9.11K GitHub stars and 3.44K GitHub forks.

According to the StackShare community, nginx has a broader approval, being mentioned in 8674 company stacks & 2556 developers stacks; compared to Socket.IO, which is listed in 561 company stacks and 396 developer stacks.

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Advice on NGINX, Socket.IO

Noam

Jul 16, 2020

Needs adviceon

Node.js

ExpressJS

React

We are starting to work on a web-based platform aiming to connect artists (clients) and professional freelancers (service providers). In-app, timeline-based, real-time communication between users (& storing it), file transfers, and push notifications are essential core features. We are considering using Node.js, ExpressJS, React, MongoDB stack with Socket.IO & Apollo, or maybe using Real-Time Database and functionalities of Firebase.

1.15M views1.15M

Comments

greg00m

Mar 9, 2020

Needs advice

I am diving into web development, both front and back end. I feel comfortable with administration, scripting and moderate coding in bash, Python and C++, but I am also a Windows fan (i love inner conflict). What are the votes on web servers? IIS is expensive and restrictive (has Windows adoption of open source changed this?) Apache has the history but seems to be at the root of most of my Infosec issues, and I know nothing about nginx (is it too new to rely on?). And no, I don't know what I want to do on the web explicitly, but hosting and data storage (both cloud and tape) are possibilities.
Ready, aim fire!

766k views766k

Comments

Grant

Developer at GMS LLC

Sep 5, 2020

Decided

Server rendered HTML output from PHP is being migrated to the client as Vue.js components, future plans to provide additional content, and other new miscellaneous features all result in a substantial increase of static files needing to be served from the server. NGINX has better performance than Apache for serving static content.
The change to NGINX will require switching from PHP to PHP-FPM resulting in a distributed architecture with a higher complexity configuration, but this is outweighed by PHP-FPM being faster than PHP for processing requests.
The NGINX + PHP-FPM setup now allows for horizontally scaling of resources rather vertically scaling the previously combined Apache + PHP resources.
PHP shell tasks can now efficiently be decoupled from the application reducing main application footprint and allow for scaling of tasks on an individual basis.

429k views429k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

NGINX	Socket.IO
nginx [engine x] is an HTTP and reverse proxy server, as well as a mail proxy server, written by Igor Sysoev. According to Netcraft nginx served or proxied 30.46% of the top million busiest sites in Jan 2018.	It enables real-time bidirectional event-based communication. It works on every platform, browser or device, focusing equally on reliability and speed.
-	Real-time analytics - Push data to clients that gets represented as real-time counters, charts or logs.;Binary streaming - Starting in 1.0, it's possible to send any blob back and forth: image, audio, video.;Instant messaging and chat - Socket.IO's "Hello world" is a chat app in just a few lines of code.;Document collaboration - Allow users to concurrently edit a document and see each other's changes.
Statistics
GitHub Stars 28.4K	GitHub Stars -
GitHub Forks 7.6K	GitHub Forks -
Stacks 115.0K	Stacks 13.6K
Followers 61.9K	Followers 11.0K
Votes 5.5K	Votes 776
Pros & Cons
Pros 1453 High-performance http server 895 Performance 730 Easy to configure 607 Open source 530 Load balancer Cons 10 Advanced features require subscription	Pros 219 Real-time 143 Node.js 141 Event-based communication 102 Open source 102 WebSockets Cons 12 Bad documentation 4 Githubs that complement it are mostly deprecated 3 Doesn't work on React Native 2 Small community 2 Websocket Errors
Integrations
No integrations available	Auth0 Gatsby Flutter React Backbone.js Cloud Firestore Outbrain

What are some alternatives to NGINX, Socket.IO?

Firebase

Firebase is a cloud service designed to power real-time, collaborative applications. Simply add the Firebase library to your application to gain access to a shared data structure; any changes you make to that data are automatically synchronized with the Firebase cloud and with other clients within milliseconds.

Apache HTTP Server

The Apache HTTP Server is a powerful and flexible HTTP/1.1 compliant web server. Originally designed as a replacement for the NCSA HTTP Server, it has grown to be the most popular web server on the Internet.

Unicorn

Unicorn is an HTTP server for Rack applications designed to only serve fast clients on low-latency, high-bandwidth connections and take advantage of features in Unix/Unix-like kernels. Slow clients should only be served by placing a reverse proxy capable of fully buffering both the the request and response in between Unicorn and slow clients.

PubNub

PubNub makes it easy for you to add real-time capabilities to your apps, without worrying about the infrastructure. Build apps that allow your users to engage in real-time across mobile, browser, desktop and server.

Microsoft IIS

Internet Information Services (IIS) for Windows Server is a flexible, secure and manageable Web server for hosting anything on the Web. From media streaming to web applications, IIS's scalable and open architecture is ready to handle the most demanding tasks.

Pusher

Pusher is the category leader in delightful APIs for app developers building communication and collaboration features.

Apache Tomcat

Apache Tomcat powers numerous large-scale, mission-critical web applications across a diverse range of industries and organizations.

Passenger

Phusion Passenger is a web server and application server, designed to be fast, robust and lightweight. It takes a lot of complexity out of deploying web apps, adds powerful enterprise-grade features that are useful in production, and makes administration much easier and less complex.

SignalR

SignalR allows bi-directional communication between server and client. Servers can now push content to connected clients instantly as it becomes available. SignalR supports Web Sockets, and falls back to other compatible techniques for older browsers. SignalR includes APIs for connection management (for instance, connect and disconnect events), grouping connections, and authorization.

Ably

Ably offers WebSockets, stream resume, history, presence, and managed third-party integrations to make it simple to build, extend, and deliver digital realtime experiences at scale.