WebSockets and masking

Hi,

I wrote a draft that proposes adding an extension to WebSockets to
negotiate "no-masking". The extension should be used only if intermediaries
cannot see unencrypted traffic. In this case, the masking is not needed,
and omitting it would reduce needed processing. The proposal has some
problems, but I would like to hear the opinion of the group and if people
are interested in such a feature.

https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-damjanovic-websockets-nomasking-00.html


A problem that I have identified with the proposal is that it will require
TLS terminating middleboxes to change (they will need to remove the
extension from the list), otherwise, servers behind them could wrongly
negotiate the extension. This is not optimal.

Other approaches I have considered:

- making it HTTP/2- and HTTP/3-only feature and negotiating it via settings
(In this way it cannot be transfer to unencripted part of a path). This is
not ideal.

- Creating a new header for the feature and adding it to the “Connection”
header in the case of HTTP/1.1 and transferring it as a setting in the case
of HTTP/2 and HTTP/3, and

- creating a new version of the WebSocket protocol, but the negotiation of
a new version is not ideal for this purpose and may have the same problems
as my proposal in the draft.


Other ideas are welcome.

I would like to hear your opinion.

Best,

Dragana