What is WebRTC?

WebRTC, short for Web Real-time Communication, is an open source project of Google, which aims to enable browsers to provide API interfaces supporting real-time Communication through a series of protocols and specifications. In this way, local audio and video resources can be shared in real time through simple interface invocation in the browser.

The idea was first proposed by a Google employee in 2009, and several people interested in the idea started working on it. It wasn’t long before the differences in access to local resources were solved, with the only difficulty being real-time communication. At the same time, With the spread of The Chrome browser, Google began to put a lot of effort into the idea. In 2011, it acquired Gips, a company that had the low-level components needed for real-time communication, and WebRTC was born.

(Photo: t.cn/RQ3FnsC)

Why WebRTC ?

Before WebRTC, there were only two ways to implement real-time communication in a browser:

  • Flash: The Flash technology is used to share local audio and video resources. The biggest problem with Flash is that it only provides poor-quality video and audio resources and requires a server license to run it.
  • Plug-in: Plug-ins are installed for the browser to access local resources to share local audio and video resources. However, the biggest problem of using plug-ins is high maintenance cost, because different browsers and different systems need to provide different versions of plug-ins, so a function needs to be developed for different platforms.

By comparison, it is obvious that WebRTC can realize real-time communication only through the same API interface provided by the browser, while the development process does not care about platform, compatibility and even security issues, so the implementation cost of real-time communication will be reduced a lot. Therefore, many websites have started to use WebRTC technology to achieve real-time communication function.

Why ASSESS ?

WebRTC is the preferred solution for real-time Web communication, but why is it still “evaluated” on our technical radar? I think one of the main issues right now is browser support. Here’s the latest update on WebRTC support for browsers. Obviously, WebRTC doesn’t currently support any IOS devices, which makes WebRTC much less applicable. Second, for security reasons, all sites that use WebRTC must use HTTPS, which greatly limits WebRTC’s scope of application.

However, WebRTC is still the easiest streaming media platform to implement AR/VR technology in browsers. In addition, Apple has clearly indicated that it will support WebRTC in Safari in the future. It is not known that IOS devices support WebRTC and AR/VR technology is widely adopted in browsers. Will WebRTC grow by leaps and bounds?

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