Scaling Kafka with WebSockets

Apache Kafka is a popular real-time data streaming platform known for its ability to handle massive volumes of data with minimal latency. However, scaling Kafka to manage thousands of client connections can be complex and costly due to its architecture being designed for efficient data processing rather than handling high volumes of connections. Many organizations offload client connections to a connection management service to optimize scaling for Kafka. Combining Kafka with WebSockets allows developers to scale Kafka efficiently for throughput by using a WebSocket layer to handle client connections, offering real-time bi-directional communication and independent scaling for data ingestion and delivery. This approach can lead to significant cost savings as the infrastructure for Kafka is scaled only for the data it processes, not for the volume of connections.