System and method for achieving highly scalable real-time collaboration applications using HTTP

A highly scalable and highly responsive RTC system uses asynchronous or non-blocking I/O and HTTP response queuing to avoid server overload. The system distinguishes between two types of requests: an update request and a change request. An update request is a request used to fetch an update or change notification. A change request is a request to change some data related to the real-time session. For a given RTC session, the server first checks whether any updates exist for an update request. If an update exists, the server code can send an immediate response to the client. However, if no update exists, the server code application sets a well-defined HTTP response header, and then responds. Once the server code application responds, all application server resources are freed, and the application server is free to handle the next requests without blocking any thread.