Native, Open Source, or CPaaS?
A very common and very important discussion we have with our clients before we build their custom WebRTC application is about architecture. Should it be a native WeRTC application, built on an open source media server, or use a commercial CPaaS platform? Let’s talk about each one, their benefits and drawbacks, and what factors play into this important decision. This content is also available in our WebRTC Tips by WebRTC.ventures YouTube series. WebRTC is not
Things I Wish I Knew Before Building My First WebRTC App
Naive me in 2015: Thinking WebRTC is just another browser API. Experienced me after more than five years and dozens of WebRTC applications: WebRTC based applications are different from other web applications with a unique set of challenges. But also, solutions, if you have a little experience behind you. In this post, I will review some of the things I wish I had known back then. But first, some WebRTC basics. WebRTC is: an open
Layers of Testing for WebRTC Applications
The only thing harder than developing a WebRTC application is testing it. When our team at WebRTC.ventures started building live video applications five years ago, most of the work we did for clients and ourselves were essentially prototypes. The success metric was an alpha or beta phase with potential customers, or simply “demo ware” that could be shown to potential investors in order to secure the funding to build the full-scale application. My, how times have changed!
What is WebRTC?
Let’s talk about the very basics of what WebRTC is and when and why we might use it. WebRTC: Is an HTLM5 standardUses JavascriptAllows you to control the camera and microphone in the browser with no downloadsIs encrypted and secure In other words, WebRTC allows you to set up a live peer-to-peer connection between two different browsers - or more - to exchange private video, audio, and data between them. WebRTC is a form of
WebRTC Signaling Servers – STUN vs TURN
STUN and TURN servers are two types of WebRTC signaling servers that can be used to create your peer-to-peer (P2P) connection when you are building a real-time communication application. Signaling is not part of the WebRTC standard and thus needs to be handled separately if you are building the application yourself rather than using a commercial platform (more on this later!) If you are a visual learner, we have embedded a WebRTC Tips by WebRTC.ventures
Watch WebRTC Live #49: Debugging WebRTC Applications
On December 9, 2020, WebRTC.ventures produced our 49th episode of WebRTC Live. Arin's guest was our own Senior WebRTC Engineer and Developer Evangelist, Germán Goldenstein, to discuss tools and methodologies for debugging WebRTC applications. Germán has been working in the software development industry since 2002 and with WebRTC.ventures since 2015. He is one of the core developers of Interactive Broadcast Solution, a TokBox (now Vonage) product. “I had a great connection, but the video quality
Trends for WebRTC Development in 2021
2020 has been a devastating year globally. The COVID 19 pandemic has affected nearly every aspect of our lives. There’s no doubt it will continue to affect our lives throughout 2021. Sadly, we will see many more lives lost. Long lasting scars - and healing Traumatic events such as this have a way of leaving scars on society for a long time, sometimes as long as the lifetime of the generations most affected. For example, my
IIT Real Time Communications 2020: WebRTC Track Talks
For the second year running, our CEO and Founder, Arin Sime, curated the WebRTC track of the Real Time Communications Conference at the Illinois Institute of Technology. We were also proud to be a sponsor. The IIT RTC annual conference is a globally recognized collaborative event where industry and academia connect. It brings together software developers, network engineers, entrepreneurs, business executives, students, and academic educators and researchers to promote an open exchange of ideas to lead future
Pre-Call Tests in Live Video Apps
What’s the most important thing that you can do to make your live video application successful? Anything you can do to improve call quality! This will certainly make your users more satisfied with your app and therefore make you more successful. However, optimization can only get us so far. This is because we can’t always control call quality, no matter how much tweaking we do on our media servers. And the biggest factor in call quality is
A Guide to the Amazon Chime SDK
The pandemic has forced the big players in cloud computing to offer communication services, of which arguably the biggest is Amazon with their Amazon Web Services platform. Now AWS is offering SDK’s and API’s for their pre-existing Amazon Chime video conferencing application. This will allow customers to easily build their own real-time communication apps with Amazon's infrastructure as the backbone. In this post, we will go through setting up a simple videoconferencing app with the
Building a Video Conferencing App Using Janus WebRTC Media Server
For basic one to one video communications on the web, we could just use WebRTC and connect peers directly. However, when we want advanced functionalities (ie, recording or transcoding), or if we have more participants, we will need the help of a media server. A WebRTC media server essentially is a server optimized to more efficiently receive and send media. There are many great open source WebRTC media servers out there. (We mentioned some of them
WebRTC Media Servers – SFUs vs MCUs
There are many different ways to build your WebRTC application. You can use a CPaaS service like Vonage, Twilio or Agora. You can implement your own Peer-to-Peer application directly against the standard. Or, you can build on top of open source media servers like Jitsi and Janus. If you choose to use open source media servers, the next thing to decide is whether you want to use an SFU or an MCU. What does that mean? We
Kranky Geek 2020: Conference Recap
Kranky Geek 2020 was another conference that was held online this year due to COVID. And another remote conference that, despite that fact, exceeded our expectations. (Read more on Virtual Conferences and Networking in the Pandemic.) Kranky Geek brings together real-time communication experts from around the globe to discuss the current state and the immediate future of the WebRTC ecosystem. While we missed traveling to a fun city like San Francisco as we did last year,
Watch WebRTC Live #48: WebRTC and Security with Google’s Natalie Silvanovich
On November 11, 2020, WebRTC.ventures produced our 48th episode of WebRTC Live. Arin's guest was Natalie Silvanovich, a security researcher on Google Project Zero whose current focus is browser security, including script engines, WebAssembly and WebRTC. You might assume that WebRTC is inherently secure, but Natalie opened our eyes to potential risks and helped us understand how we can protect our WebRTC applications. She discussed types of WebRTC vulnerabilities such as memory corruption and logic
Watch WebRTC Live #47: “WebRTC For The Curious with Sean DuBois”
On October 28, 2020, WebRTC.ventures produced our 47th episode of WebRTC Live. Arin's guest was Sean DuBois, Pion WebRTC Creator and Developer at Amazon Web Services. He is also the author of WebRTC For The Curious, an open source book created by WebRTC implementers to share their hard-earned knowledge. As Sean says, "WebRTC is a wonderful technology but is difficult to use." WebRTC for the Curious is designed for: Developers who don’t even know what WebRTC
Building An App Using Microsoft’s Azure Communication Services
In a previous blog post, we discussed the advent of Microsoft’s new Communication-Platform-as-a-Service (CPaaS) platform, Azure Communication Services. Today, we will get our hands dirty and implement a Group Video Calling App that can handle up to 50 participants. We will go through setting up the app in your local environment and look at some key features in the code. Prerequisites (1. Calling Hero Sample): Create an Azure account with an active subscription. For details,
Virtual Weddings in the Pandemic
Part of our blog series on Virtual Events in the Pandemic Have you ever wished you could attend a wedding virtually? Probably not. Although when I got married to my wonderful wife, Lauren, over 21 years ago, I think we both would have been very tempted to make it a virtual gathering. It would have reduced the stress on planning and balancing all the competing interests of family members. But when I was married in 1999,
Azure Communication Services
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Our team at WebRTC.ventures often leverages a Communication-Platform-as-a-Service (CPaaS) in our live video application development. Each CPaaS has its own pros and cons. We do our best to keep up with them all so we can best serve our clients. With a global pandemic still raging and millions more people working remotely, the CPaaS market is bound to grow this year. That’s why we were very interested to learn that Microsoft was launching their own
CPaaS as a Secretary: WebRTC.ventures Wins TAD Hack 2020 Symbl.ai Prize
Two members of the WebRTC.ventures team, Hamza Nasir and Justin Williams, participated in TADHack 2020 Chicago/North America earlier this month. Their hack was to create a CPaaS solution for a more organized and efficient way to handle missed calls when you’re away from work using AI. They came home with the Symbl.ai prize! Brainstorming Due to COVID, this year’s hackathon was fully remote. The team worked from home, using Slack and GitHub to communicate and
First thoughts on Twilio Video WebRTC Go
I’ve been to some fun conferences. Twilio always puts on a good show -- and an even better after party! So it certainly one of the many (very understandable) disappointments of this year was that SIGNAL 2020 would be remote. Alas, I would not have the chance to cross lightsabers again with Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson. Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson, myself, and WebRTC.ventures Senior Engineer Germán Goldenstein at SIGNAL 2017 Not surprisingly, Twilio still did
