Author: Liang Qihong, co-founder of Fantai Geek
If you’re an engineer, you’ve heard of WebRTC, even if you haven’t developed it. If you’re an Internet user, chances are you’ve used WebRTC, even if you don’t realize it. In an age when video is king, we ramble on about the ins and outs of the technology and some interesting applications.
WebRTC?
Classical Chinese “di” also indicates doubt, meaning “he” and “what”. Such as the southern Tang Dynasty in the main Li Jing in the ridicule of Feng Yansi wrote, “the wind suddenly wrinkle a pool of spring water, dry qing bottom matter?”
In the 20th century, people wrote with pens and sent letters through the post office. In the early 21st century, people wrote with keyboards and communicated with each other via email/SMS/instant messaging. Your phone camera /VR device is your tool to write and record the world, and real-time Internet communication is your method of communication.
Video into entertainment, study, business meetings, social networking, the carrier of electricity, people no longer have the patience to read text information, now even buy a furniture installation, it comes with qr code, the user as long as a sweeping namely open installation guide video, don’t have to repeatedly research paper in the manual that is often very poor installation drawing.
Video is not only the presentation of information, it from a part of MOV, JPEG4, WMV (your hard disk is familiar but strange files, right?) It becomes one player after another, and then one App after another. Then, it changes from one-way “record , upload , download , find player, open and play”, to “live record recorder, record and play at the same time, broadcast at the same time, watch at the same time at the same time, and then to two-way” record and play “that integrates video, instant messaging tools and conference tools.
Teleconferencing has become standard in today’s offices
The legendary “live broadcasting” has finally developed into a “civilian” stage. WebRTC, which stands for Web Real-Time Communication, is one such basic technology that enables you to record and communicate with a new “pen” (smart video device, such as your mobile phone) by video rather than text.
Its secret lies in two parts, of course: Web + RTC! Isn’t that obvious nonsense? Not really… But first, let’s talk about RTC, real-time Internet communications.
Compared with RTC, WebRTC is only a standard established for web real-time communication, which only provides the basic front-end functions to achieve. WebRTC cannot simply be equated with RTC.
“Feels fast” is real time?
WebRTC emphasizes “real-time communication networks.” The Web is already everywhere, but is it “real-time”? Most of the time, no.
First of all, the most important and basic HTTP protocol on the Internet is not designed for “real-time” application, when you visit a web site, you initiate the request, waiting for the site of the content server response sent back to your PC or mobile device, although this response can be very fast, but are essentially “request – wait – response”, the “waiting”, Is often a time variable that is not easy to control.
- Is E-mail “real time”? Is not obviously, while about one hundred and eight thousand times faster than traditional mail, but it is essentially a “storage – Forward” (Store – and – Forward) mechanism, by a lot of mail server to relay on the Internet, in an optimal network path sent an email from one of the equipment to a b equipment, any intermediate link is likely to be delayed.
- Is chat real time? It than email, have more sense of “online” session – a group chat messages back and forth, this hair look, over there seem to be “real time”, but its technical nature is still a “storage – forward”, the message recipient is not online, it doesn’t matter, as long as the “on-line” (open App) can receive, also do not need to reply immediately.
In fact, the perception of speed does not define real time. The low latency and high bandwidth of network are some guarantees of real time, but they are not the same as real time.
In plain English, the goal of real-time video is to “synchronize” what is happening in one place, A, to another place, B, with almost zero delay and no loss of authenticity, so that people in B can instantly see, hear, and vice versa. People and things are constantly changing, and videos need to be constantly updated to the remote end in the form of “streaming”. Although people in A and B are separated by thousands of miles, the network between them can instantly synchronize the “video streaming” and make each other feel close to each other, which is called “real-time”.
So how close are our “real-time communication networks” to real time?
Building a meta-universe? Infinite pursuit of real-time
The short answer to that question is, a little.
Our quest for “real time” is infinite, and a more detailed explanation can be found in the recently hyped “metasverse”. Yuan of the universe, is a “simulation” or “all” of the Internet, one of the characteristics of it, is the use of extremely strong real-time network, put the things in the physical world is infinite details information instantly and transmitted to the receiver, to make it through special equipment to recover this information and feel to the greatest extent in the primary to the original form of things.
What can this information include? For example, Spatial Audio allows you to hear the location of the speaker in an online conference room, and in a virtual social salon, you can hear slight background music, the gossip of a group of people on the left, and the sound of the bartender on the bar on the right. For example, feature data of people or things that can be rendered by remote devices to restore realistic 3D effects can be as big as street view buildings and as small as hair and facial expressions, so that you can interact with objects or people in virtual space like real ones. If one day we invent a device that can collect and digitize smells and recreate them remotely by stimulating the cortex, then that’s another kind of data to transmit. In short, we want to synchronize to our brains anything that is physically distant.
If the current Internet is 2D (that is, you can only interact with a two-dimensional surface like a screen), the metasomes are the next generation of 3D Internet, in which you are “immersed” in data delivered in real time, with your eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body and mind all in it. Don’t think this is science fiction. Some technologies are already visible, from the simple like HubHub to the more sophisticated like Google’s Starline.
If you’re interested, check out Metaverse Primer
** In Matthew Ball’s “Metaverse Primer,” the real-time Web is mentioned as one of the eight most central technologies enabling this generation of immersive Internet. ** The ability to transmit massive amounts of data in real time with extremely low latency is still technologically a bit distant.
While the metasverse is still at an unknown point on the “hype curve,” some real business scenarios can already be built around real-time video technology. In addition to the familiar live delivery and entertainment interaction, there are also virtual exhibitions, real-time coach training, Telehealth and other applications. I believe that any offline scene, as long as the technology allows, will produce online simulation one day.
Decentralized means of communication?
The “Web” part of WebRTC is not simply meaningless in general, but specifically refers to the Web Browser. The standard, and the technology that enables it, are now built into major browsers, theoretically allowing any user to initiate direct video and voice communication with each other through any browser on any PC, Mac, iPhone, Android or even in-car systems.
** That is to say, no matter where they are, as long as they have a device running a browser that supports HTML5 standard in theory, they can establish a direct connection between the two browsers without going through the communication services or channels of “middlemen” (big Internet platforms, telecom operators, etc.). Implement the legendary peer-to-peer video communication and file sharing! ** if there are wang Wu, Chen Liu, he Qi several? Welcome to a completely barrier-free, serverless, self-organizing peer-to-peer network where everyone’s browser is a node for video conferencing and file sharing.
It’s kind of like VR Pro Max
There is no middleman to earn price difference, no big Internet platform to collect the privacy data of communication parties, individuals control their own information security, and do not rely on any third party, is it suddenly a feeling of freedom to fly? Decentralized, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer networks remind us of the beautiful wild days of the Internet – BT, Donkey, Thunderbolt… The good old days…
Unfortunately, for the time being, the above situation is just an ideal, because the actual environment of the Internet is complicated, for example, everyone’s Internet access equipment is actually behind the broadband in a community, mobile operator network, hotel WiFi, company LAN and so on. In fact, the Internet is interconnected through a series of network devices and network protocols, and the transmission of information on the link is forwarded layer by layer and the “translation” of network address/port through different network devices, before finally reaching a certain individual device.
Zhang Mou, the employee of some company in science and technology park of Shenzhen Nanshan District, how to let its browser discover and connect the browser device address of the masses of some small area of Beijing Chaoyang district Li Mou, thus establish the starting point to the point directly connected? There is no direct way.
The current technology is still centralized, meaning zhang and Li have to use a third-party service to “discover” each other’s addresses, a process called Signaling.
“Decentralization” is imminent, there is no off-the-shelf technology, it is a pity.
Blockchain + WebRTC?
There are some research and exploration in this respect, to be further in-depth aspirant.
The first is about the optimization and extension of the technology itself. For example, Kademlia (a DHT/ distributed hash table algorithm used for networking by blockchains such as Ethereum and Storj) has been proposed to decentralize signaling services. An IEEE research paper explores the use of blockchain smart contracts to improve WebRTC security.
Can blockchain achieve new breakthroughs with WebRtc
Secondly, in terms of application, there is a proposal that, with the increasing proportion of telecommuting since the epidemic, for reasons of enterprise information security, compliance traces and work efficiency control, it is necessary to record all kinds of external telecommuting activities such as sales and service. It is difficult to establish a single trusted source and tracking context for Call Detail Record (CDR) relying on existing infrastructure providers. It can combine block chain and smart contract to block WebRTC communication Record data to realize the benefits of single trusted source copy, non-tampering and distributed storage.
Many services of financial institutions, such as opening an account or purchasing financial products, require remote video witness, which may be a good application scenario of blockchain +WebRTC.
The future of WebRTC and Google’s calculations
Speaking of the future, we have to look back at the history of this technology.
On January 26, 2021, the W3C officially announced the 1.0 standard (” WebRTC 1.0: Real-time Communication Between Browser “). WebRTC had experienced a full 10 years of development before: 2011-2014 was the exploratory period of this technology, and the main question was: Should I try this technology? 2015-2019 is the growth period for this technology, and with all major browsers supporting WebRTC, the question in the industry becomes: How do I take advantage of this standard technology? What are the application scenarios? The year 2020 has been a period of differentiation in the application of this technology.
WebRtc’s logo has a typical Google color scheme
The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 is believed to have a direct catalytic impact on WebRTC technology. Video conferencing is so ubiquitous that Zoom has become a household name (in the domestic market, of course, the corresponding brand of some Internet giants), and it can be said that the public’s awareness and acceptance of cloud video conferencing has never been stronger.
Does WebRTC, also a W3C standard, have a chance of becoming the basic protocol for the next generation of the Internet (whether you call it a “real-time communication network,” “Web3.0,” or a “meta-universe”) the way HTTP was for the “classical Internet”? To answer this question, we need to know the real “operator” behind WebRTC.
The driver is Google – which not only pushed WebRTC as an Internet standard, but also contributed much of the underlying open source technology. What motivated Google to do this ten years ago? There are probably several reasons:
- Bet on the technological development of this decade, so that video coding technology, video quality, network bandwidth, computing resources have significant development, video has become the most important application carrier on the Internet;
- Video conferencing in many companies at the time was still intra-enterprise, cumbersome in setup and requiring specialized equipment. With the development of cloud computing, will video conferencing become a cloud service? Quite likely;
- Video apps require specialized software tools (remember the various video players of a decade ago?). Google does not control computer operating systems, but its Chrome browser has begun to beat Out Microsoft and Firefox as a ubiquitous presence. A video technology built into the browser, to bring great convenience to users, video content and web content at any time intertwined, open to see, download what video player?
- Most importantly, Google had no advantage in videoconferencing and was not the leading technology platform provider. Therefore, there is no harm in opening a source and stirring up a stir.
The WebRTC standard and technology, which eventually won support for Firefox, Opera, Apple Safari, Microsoft Edge, and various Chrome variants, was a huge success from that perspective. Ironically, none of Google’s own video offerings seem to have had much commercial success. In video conferencing, for example, you might not even think that Google has a product in this area (and it’s good quality), whereas many of Google’s competitors are using WebRTC to gain a competitive advantage.
WebRtc is more than 90% supported in all browsers
When WebRTC became a public standard, Google itself seemed to be “decoupling” from WebRTC and investing in a whole new technology stack: WebTransport + WebCodecs + WebAssembly. WebTransport is mainly based on QUIC (HTTP/3 transport layer protocol), which brings lower network latency and is more suitable for video applications. WebCodecs is built into the browser, allowing it to have independent audio and video encoding and decoding capabilities. WebAssembly, an open source technology that has been in development for quite some time and is maturing, not only gives browsers a “native” level of performance for rendering executing JavaScript code, but more importantly it may support a combination of machine learning aspects.
If Google, the main driver of WebRTC open source technology, no longer invests in it, will there be a sustainable future beyond tinkering with WebRTC 1.0? Should we worry about building apps on WebRTC?
WebRTC has become the cornerstone of real-time applications for the next generation of the Internet, which is probably a bit shaky, because there are really potentially better solutions out there. However, for app developers, WebRTC may be our best solution for the next few years, for three reasons:
- Not to mention HTTP/3, much of the Internet today still relies on the archaic HTTP/1.1, and HTTP/2 is still slowly growing. Replacing a standard that has matured over a decade is not easy;
- Although Apple has its own closed technology with FaceTime and Zoom (and other video service giants at home and abroad) and may not care about WebRTC, a standard, open, interconnected, industrial-quality open source technology is still the best choice for indie developers.
- The good thing about standards and open source is that as long as there are companies that can use it to create killer apps and commercial success, there will be people who will continue to support maintenance and innovation and pick up the slack from Google. For example, will someone decentralize WebRTC more thoroughly? Using QUIC to optimize WebRTC for low latency? There are always people who wonder.
What you can do as an application developer is to explore and innovate on application scenarios, which is the best guarantee that a standard/technology boom will stay alive.
What are the killer WebRTC apps?
Alexa, the smart assistant inside Amazon’s Echo smart speaker, uses WebRTC.
Facebook Messenger, Discord, Amazon Chime, And Google Meet/Hangout/Duo are all video communication tools and video conferencing applications based on WebRTC.
Clubhouse, 2021 Phenomenal voice social tool.
Chrome Remote Desktop 插 件 logo 图 片 For the average business person such as marketing, sales, etc., it may be too technical and difficult to handle. But why hasn’t anyone taken a closer look at this tool and developed something like real-time remote sales training, real-time remote machine maintenance training, real-time remote medical training?
Finally, we must recommend three noteworthy weBRTC-related companies and their application scenarios:
peer5.com
Peer 5, a WebrTc-based eCDN (Enterprise Content Distribution Network), network acceleration of content, taking full advantage of WebRTC’s built-in P2P capabilities in the browser. It was acquired by Microsoft in August. It’s a success story of a startup built on new standards and open source technology.
hopin.com
Hopin, a British unicorn that uses WebRTC to build a “virtual event platform”, has raised $570m and acquired four companies in its two years.
stadia.com
Stadia, Google’s big attempt to break into the gaming industry, is moot. What’s interesting is the opening up of Cloud Gaming, also known As Gaming As A Service or on-demand Gaming. How to understand it? For a long time, when we play Xbox or Nintendo games, we need to buy a console and put different game discs into different games. Cloud Gaming, where you don’t need a local DISC, the games run in the Cloud and are streamed to your screen, just like you order a movie on your TV, but you can interact with the movie using a gamepad.
How do you see WebRtc developing in the future? Welcome to talk to us. Contact us at finclip.com