As I see it, main technical distinction between WS and straight TCP is that WS is message oriented, not stream oriented. Basically, the spec demands that all data transmissions consist of discrete UTF-8 messages that begin with 0x00 and end with 0xFF.
The message oriented nature of things in theory makes thing easier for writing client code in JS. However, the simple boundary scheme chosen also implies no binary data (of course that is of limited use in a browser without a JS standard for dealing with binary data).
The other technical feature the RFC proposes is a standard way for HTTP clients to securely request and setup one of these web sockets (even though the web sockets themselves are not HTTP). That alone is significant because getting Comet (the current best solution) to work on all browsers is currently a nightmare.
BTW, if you are interested in doing Comet and not pulling your hair out with X-browser issues, I highly recommend the orbited project (orbited.org) and its sister bundle of JS code (js.io). These projects already provide an interface very similar to the proposed spec. I have used this API and it makes me look forward to Web Sockets becoming a standard.
Comments
As I see it, main technical distinction between WS and straight TCP is that WS is message oriented, not stream oriented. Basically, the spec demands that all data transmissions consist of discrete UTF-8 messages that begin with 0x00 and end with 0xFF.
The message oriented nature of things in theory makes thing easier for writing client code in JS. However, the simple boundary scheme chosen also implies no binary data (of course that is of limited use in a browser without a JS standard for dealing with binary data).
The other technical feature the RFC proposes is a standard way for HTTP clients to securely request and setup one of these web sockets (even though the web sockets themselves are not HTTP). That alone is significant because getting Comet (the current best solution) to work on all browsers is currently a nightmare.
BTW, if you are interested in doing Comet and not pulling your hair out with X-browser issues, I highly recommend the orbited project (orbited.org) and its sister bundle of JS code (js.io). These projects already provide an interface very similar to the proposed spec. I have used this API and it makes me look forward to Web Sockets becoming a standard.