AWS AppSync API update

[Paul-Ladyman]

Hello,

We noticed your AWS AppSync APIs leveraging GraphQL real-time subscriptions are still sending traffic on our v1 protocol (MQTT over WebSockets) in your account. From March 1, 2021, MQTT over WebSockets will be disabled for any new AppSync APIs. Your existing APIs will not be affected by this change and will continue to work with the v1 protocol.

Our recommended best practice is to have your APIs taking advantage of the v2 protocol (pure WebSockets) released November 2019. It is easy to make this change and will enhance your API's real-time capabilities.

With the new protocol, the maximum subscription payload size is increased from 128kb to 240kb, providing enhanced connection rates and broadcast rates, adding CloudWatch metrics for real-time operations from connected clients, and implementing selection set filtering for subscriptions. The new protocol allows for better visibility on WebSockets connections and GraphQL subscriptions activity with CloudWatch metrics on active connections and subscriptions, status, errors, message size and more.

For a detailed explanation on the new protocol and features, please refer to the following articles and documentation:
- New features that will enhance your Real-Time experience on AWS AppSync [1].
- Real-time data on AppSync [2].
- Real-time subscriptions metrics for pure WebSockets [3].
- Building a custom real-time WebSocket client [4].

It is very easy to migrate to the new protocol. In order to take advantage of these features, you just need to upgrade your clients to the latest AppSync SDK for JavaScript and iOS or Amplify clients. Pure WebSockets will be used by default with the latest versions. The Amplify DataStore, which is a multi-platform (iOS/Android/React Native/Web) on-device persistent storage engine that automatically synchronizes data between mobile/web apps and the cloud, also uses our pure WebSockets protocol by default.

You can find how to install the latest Amplify clients in the following links:
- For Web apps, follow these instructions [5].
- For iOS apps, follow these instructions [6].
- For Android apps, follow these instructions [7].

Please contact AWS Support [8] for any questions you may have.

[1] https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/mobile/appsync-realtime/
[2] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/appsync/latest/devguide/real-time-data.html
[3] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/appsync/latest/devguide/monitoring.html#cw-metrics
[4] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/appsync/latest/devguide/real-time-websocket-client.html
[5] https://docs.amplify.aws/lib/graphqlapi/getting-started/q/platform/js#configure-your-application
[6] https://docs.amplify.aws/lib/graphqlapi/getting-started/q/platform/ios#install-amplify-libraries
[7] https://docs.amplify.aws/lib/graphqlapi/getting-started/q/platform/android#install-amplify-libraries
[8] https://aws.amazon.com/support

Sincerely,
Amazon Web Services

Amazon Web Services, Inc. is a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc. Amazon.com is a registered trademark of Amazon.com, Inc. This message was produced and distributed by Amazon Web Services Inc., 410 Terry Ave. North, Seattle, WA 98109-5210

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