When WebSockets work locally but fail in production, it’s almost always the server/proxy, not Laravel.

Check these 3 things:

1, Nginx/Apache must allow WebSocket upgrade headers: Upgrade / Connection: upgrade

2, Use wss:// in production (not ws://).

3, WebSocket port must be open and the Reverb/WebSocket process must be running (Supervisor/systemd).

If any of these are wrong, the browser will fail the connection every time.