How would you answer an interview scenario involving WebSockets?

In an interview, I would first define WebSockets and the problem it solves, then explain how I would authenticate the connection, handle reconnects and heartbeats, bound message size and rate, plan horizontal scaling and connection affinity, and persist critical state outside individual socket processes. I would also call out the main failure mode: assuming a WebSocket connection is permanent can cause lost state or missed updates when networks, deployments, or load balancers close connections. Finally, I would describe how I would test, monitor, and safely roll back or recover the solution.