HTML5 Websockets API is an advanced technology that makes it possible to open a two-way interactive communication session between the user's browser and a server. With this API, you can send messages to a server and receive event-driven responses without having to poll the server for a reply. While a WebSocket connection is functionally somewhat similar to standard Unix-style sockets, they are not related. The WebSocket API is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape and Mozilla.