Overview of PubNub

Unlike traditional TCP or UDP communication methods, PubNub is based around HTTP. Users are divided by application, into channels. Within each channel, users can publish messages, which are broadcast to all users in the channel. There are some limitations in this regard. It is not possible to direct a message to a specific user within a channel, and this message is stored in a plain text format. Latency is also a major factor, as messages can take some time to be received. These factors make PubNub unsuitable for games requiring fast and efficient communication, but it has other uses. For instance, if players cannot be directly connected to each other to communicate (for instance, for an instant messaging feature), it's possible to use specially named channels based on the user ID to send messages to players (each player listens on their own dedicated channel for incoming private messages).