Long Polling

Summary

An older technique simulating real-time updates by having the client repeatedly request data, with the server holding the connection open until new data is available — mostly superseded by WebSockets/SSE but still seen as a fallback.

• 1Implement a simple long-polling endpoint and observe the request pattern.
• 2Understand why long polling is less efficient than WebSockets for frequent updates.
• 3Recognize it as Socket.io's fallback mechanism for restrictive network environments.