networking - Frame-based and stream-based protocols

Question

I am reading WebSocket specification, it's written:

The WebSocket Protocol is designed on the principle that there should be minimal framing (the only framing that exists is to make the protocol frame-based instead of stream-based and to support a distinction between Unicode text and binary frames).

I don't understand what do frame-based and stream-based mean. Could you please provide examples of them with some basic explanation of the difference?

Answer 1

A short overview:

Frame-Based: If I told you that I'm sending you 8 bytes and I send you 6 bytes, you would wait for the next 2 bytes and than say "this is a message".

Stream-Based: I send you 6 bytes. I send you 2 bytes. Is it one message? two messages? six messages? How do you know where one message starts and another begins?