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To facilitate push notifications, is it absolutely necessary for a browser to host servers to accomplish this?

Each time I launch Firefox, prior to going to any websites, Firefox makes a connection to an Amazon AWS server that it maintains 24/7 (as long as the web browser it open).

Anyone who knows how to monitor their connections can verify what I'm saying. As soon as you launch Firefox, (prior to going to any websites) it will make and sustain a connection to an ip address like this one: enter image description here

As long as Firefox remains open, you'll sustain a connection to an Amazon AWS server like the one above.

Is this really just the nature of push notifications? It is a technology that must maintain a 24/7 connection to your computer even if you haven't even navigated to a website?

So by design, the spec prescribed that a browser maker must provide a 24/7 service to facilitate this technology?

If this is the only way to facilitate this technology, then I'd be interested in running my own service to facilitate it. I don't feel comfortable with my web-browser maintaining a 24/7 connection to a server that's also controlled by the maker of the web-browser.

While the intention of this is probably divine, I consider it a slippery slope. A web browser that maintains a 24/7 connection with its creators, over the long run, I feel will evolve to communicate much more than just push notifications.

If you can put my concerns to rest. Please do.

My ultimate question is this:

If what I've described above, is simply the nature of the spec (as written), then is it possible to host you're own push notification service, so that your web browser uses your own service, instead of some 3rd party (like the maker of your web-browser)?

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  • BTW, this same question was already censored and deleted here.
    – Lonnie Best
    Commented Oct 18, 2023 at 19:33
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    See stackoverflow.com/questions/53169001/… - which answers both your question about the architecture and how to configure Firefox to use your own push server.
    – Steffen Ullrich
    Commented Oct 18, 2023 at 19:50
  • "this same question was already censored and deleted here" - it wasn't censored. It was automatically deleted since it had 0 votes, no answers, too few views and was older than 365 days. See stackoverflow.com/help/auto-deleted-questions (which is the link you get when following the "deleted" in your screen shot).
    – Steffen Ullrich
    Commented Oct 18, 2023 at 20:08

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If what I've described above, is simply the nature of the spec (as written)

Websites send push notifications through the Web Push Protocol, which is documented in RFC 3080. From the website's perspective, it makes an HTTP POST request to a URL supplied by the browser (see section 5 of that RFC). That URL has to be publicly reachable so the website can send data to it.

If you don't want to use Mozilla's push service, you can turn it off in about:config. There are two keys there, dom.push.enabled and dom.push.connection.enabled, that can be changed.

You could write your own service. Firefox uses its own protocol to handle communications; the current implementation is hosted on GitHub, and there is some documentation there on how it's built. You can change the server in about:config using the dom.push.serverURL key.

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