Software Design

WebSocket Client Connection States

State Diagrams · made in Skemio

WebSocket state diagram showing Connecting, Open, Reconnecting, and Closed states with transitions for backoff and disconnection.
WebSocket state diagram showing Connecting, Open, Reconnecting, and Closed states with transitions for backoff and disconnection.
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What it shows

  • Buffer outbound messages during reconnection to prevent dropping user data.
  • Implement exponential backoff plus jitter to avoid thundering herd storms.
  • Track heartbeat ping/pong timeouts to detect half-open sockets promptly.

The takeaway

Resilient WebSocket clients treat disconnections as a standard state, not an exception.

More state diagrams