LWS

LWS most commonly refers to libwebsockets, an open-source C library that provides a lightweight, portable implementation of WebSocket communication and related HTTP functionality for embedded systems, servers, and services. Libwebsockets is designed to be embedded within applications, offering a small memory footprint and an event-driven model suitable for high-concurrency networking tasks.

The library supports WebSocket servers and clients, HTTP/1.1 handling, and can function as an embedded HTTP server. It includes TLS/SSL support, permessage-deflate compression, server-side event handling, and compatibility with various transport mechanisms. Libwebsockets emphasizes portability across platforms and architectures, with backends available for Linux (epoll), BSD variants (kqueue), Windows (IOCP), and other environments.

Libwebsockets is distributed under a permissive open-source license and provides a range of example programs, documentation, and a modular architecture to facilitate integration into diverse projects. It is commonly used in real-time web applications, Internet of Things deployments, and services requiring scalable WebSocket communication, such as dashboards, telemetry, and remote-control interfaces.

Because LWS is an acronym with multiple potential meanings, the context often determines the intended referent. In software development, however, LWS most frequently denotes libwebsockets. Other uses of the acronym may exist in different technical domains.