1. Local Touch – Global Reach
Intro to SignalR + Awesome Mobile Possibilities !
Samidip Basu
Solutions Lead | MSFT Mobility
Email: Samidip.Basu@us.sogeti.com
Twitter: @samidip
Info: http://samidipbasu.info
Blog: http://samidipbasu.com
Sogeti USA
8425 Pulsar Place, Suite 300 | Columbus, OH 43240.
www.us.sogeti.com
www.us.sogeti.com

2. Central Ohio Windows Phone User Group
http://cowpug.org
http://meetup.com/cowpug
@cowpug
3rd Monday @ TechColumbus

3. http://www.m3conf.com/
@m3conf

4. SilverlightShow (www.silverlightshow.net) – online
portal for everything Silverlight, XAML and Windows
Phone, 10K+ members.
* daily news * tutorials
* exclusive articles * forums
* free webinars * events
* ebooks * newsletters
CompletIT (www.completit.com) – Silverlight and
Windows Phone trainings, consultations and
development company, founder of SilverlightShow.
* Individual and group, on-site and online trainings
* Standard and custom course schedules
* Trainings by Silverlight MVP, MCT

5. Why do we need real-time?
 New email
 Twitter/Facebook updates
 Stock Ticker/Live Auctions
 Game Scores
 Real-time Notifications
 Turn-by-Turn Games
 Collaboration
 Progress Bars
 And obviously, Chat

6. Existing Technologies?
 HTTP – purely Request/Response protocol
 Internet – not real-time; stateless; services don’t call your app
 Consumption model .. But we’ve learnt tricks
 Periodic/Ajax Polling – not real-time, bandwidth misuse
Image courtesy @maartenballiauw

7. Existing Technologies .. contd?
 Use plugins like SL/Flash – to access sockets
 Native Web Sockets help – but low level & support flaky
 Long Polling – server does not respond unless X happens,
client polls after data receive or time-out
Image courtesy @maartenballiauw

8. Enter SignalR
 An async, persistent connection/signalling library for .NET ... aids
in building real-time, multi-user connected applications.
 Persistent client-server connection over best transport .. Abstracts
away the transport layer.
 From ASP.NET Team (Damian Edwards & David Fowler) .. Not
officially MSFT product, but OSS
 https://github.com/SignalR/SignalR
 http://jabbr.net/#/rooms/signal
 SignalR is broken up into a few packages on NuGet:
SignalR - Package for SignalR.Server and SignalR.Js
SignalR.Server - Server components needed for SignalR endpoints
SignalR.Js - Javascript client for SignalR
SignalR.Client - .NET client for SignalR
SignalR.WP7 & SignalR.Silverlight – For the cool folks 
SignalR.WebSockets - WebSocket Transport for SignalR

9. Live Demos !
 Whoa .. What happened here?
 Client calls server; Server calls client; seamlessly
 No polling, at least in our code
 Server maintains Clients .. Broadcast to all, group or
individual clients
 Low level – PersistentConnection; more control
 Abstraction – Hub; easier to use

10. Where does this stand?
 Other technologies have solved this problem
 Socket.IO is a client-side Jscript library that talks to node.js
 Nowjs supports namespace sync between client-server
 Primary SignalR advantages
 Simplicity & ease of use
 Works natively in .NET
 Works out of browser
 Supports Web Sockets through a NuGet package
[ASP.NET 4.5/IIS 8 on Win8 only]
[WebSocket is a web technology providing for multiplexing bi-directional, full-duplex
communications channels over a single TCP connection. Still being standardized.]
 Works on other platforms

11. SignalR Client for iOS
http://dyknow.github.com/SignalR-ObjC/

12. SignalR Client for Mono (Android)
http://blog.rthand.com/post/2012/03/14/SignalR-client-on-Mono-for-Android.aspx

13. Local Touch – Global Reach
Questions?
Thank you !!
www.us.sogeti.com