Reading from udp port in browser

Question

Aside from Java Applet, is there anyway we can read from an UDP socket? I know websockets are TCP sockets, but I need to communicate with a server via udp sockets, anything in HTML5, or anything at all? I have looked at this post from: two years ago and this one as well again from two years ago no UDP. I was wondering if there is any new way now that we are in 2013 to use the browser to communicate with a server via udp socket?

Answer 1

What you are looking for can't be done with in Javascript due to security constraints such as Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks. The closest technology available (that I know of) for client-side JS is WebRTC.

With WebRTC you can use DataChannels over SRTP and ICE as a possible solution.

See Also:

• How to send a UDP Packet with Web RTC - Javascript?
• Can I use WebRTC to open a UDP connection?

Answer 2

You can use both TCP and UDP connections with the chrome.socket API, but this is only for Packaged Apps (i.e. apps that are bundled in a container to be run as desktop apps).

The API was available for a while for Chrome extensions, when it was in experimental status (see this answer, from a user who works at Google and was co-presenter for Packaged Apps at Google I/O 2012)