Is this the right way to write a Comet client?

Question

I started using x-socket for writing a simple Comet client that can connect to a server implemented using grizzly comet with the goal of maintaining a persistent connection on which the server can push updates to the client. I wrote the following but I am not sure if this is the right way of doing it because I am not able to see any updates from the server. Can someone shed some light on this?

try {
    String _GETRequest = "/sample/notify";
    HttpClientConnection con = new HttpClientConnection("10.0.0.1", 5050);
    con.setOption(HttpClientConnection.SO_KEEPALIVE, true);
    con.setOption(HttpClientConnection.SO_TIMEOUT, 100000);
    con.setConnectionTimeoutMillis(100000);
    GetRequest request = new GetRequest(_GETRequest);
    request.setParameter("id", id);

    IHttpResponseHandler responseHandler = new ResponseHandler();

    con.send(request, responseHandler);
    org.xlightweb.client.HttpClient httpClient = new org.xlightweb.client.HttpClient();
    request.setParameter("id", id);
    con.send(request, responseHandler);

    // Keep sending a request to keep the connection alive 
    //If I don't send anything, the server is terminating 
    //the connection with a FIN packet (oberved using wireshark)
    //after 30 seconds even when I specified to keep the connection open
    while(con.isOpen()) {
        Thread.sleep(10000);
        con.send(request, responseHandler);
};

} catch (ConnectException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
} catch (IOException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
}