I created a web app to let people communicate. I want to implement screen sharing and audio calls.
My current app is programmed in NodeJs and uses express and socket.io to serve the client connection and open a socket connection. I want to stream video and audio. My problem with WebRTC is that all those who connect to a call are vulnerable to a DDoS attack since it is p2p. I found an article from Discord explaining how they managed to let the entire traffic go through their servers: https://blog.discord.com/how-discord-handles-two-and-half-million-concurrent-voice-users-using-webrtc-ce01c3187429, that's exactly what I want to achieve.
Could I possibly use socket.io-stream https://www.npmjs.com/package/socket.io-stream ? I didn't yet figure out how, and it seems like all socket.io streaming libraries are made for file upload/download, not for actual video/audio streaming.
If that doesn't work, a library such as what Discord managed to make would be the perfect solution, since all traffic is proxied, and not p2p. Though I couldn't find any of those libraries, maybe I'm just looking for the wrong thing?
Best regards
You will want to use a SFU.
Each peer negotiates a session with the SFU. They then exchange media through it. Each Peer will just communicate with the server. It has lots of other benefits and is what most WebRTC deploys today use.
There are lots of Open Source SFUs out there. You can even build your own with Open Source libraries.
Related
I am going to create real time web application and would like to use WebRTC RTCDataChannel to exchange data between client and server.
WebRTC is created for peer-to-peer communication. However, is it possible to do data exchanging between server and client?
Yes! You could use a WebRTC implementation and build your server from the ground up. Will feel like using a HTTP library and setting your own endpoints.
https://github.com/aiortc/aiortc (Python)
GStreamer’s webrtcbin (C)
https://github.com/shinyoshiaki/werift-webrtc (Typescript)
https://github.com/pion/webrtc (Golang)
https://github.com/webrtc-rs/webrtc (Rust)
https://github.com/awslabs/amazon-kinesis-video-streams-webrtc-sdk-c (C/Embedded)
https://webrtc.googlesource.com/src/ (C++)
https://github.com/rawrtc/rawrtc (C++)
https://github.com/sipsorcery-org/sipsorcery (C#)
https://github.com/paullouisageneau/libdatachannel (C++)
Or you could run a WebRTC server and write an extension/modify it. This will get you something working quicker.
https://github.com/meetecho/janus-gateway
https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet
https://github.com/versatica/mediasoup
https://github.com/pion/ion-sfu
https://galene.org
https://github.com/peer-calls/peer-calls
Happy to answer more directed questions. I think it depends on what languages/tools you feel comfortable with.
I've been researching a lot on how to live stream frames coming from the camera on browser, to a node server. This server processes the image, and then is supposed to send the processed image back to the client. I was wondering what the best approach would be. I've seen solutions such as sending frames in chunks to the server, for the server to process. I've looked into webRTC, but came to the conclusion that this works more for client to client connections. Would a simple implementation such as using websockets, or using socket.io suffice?
You can use WebSockets. But, I'd not recommend it. I don't think you should drop WebRTC, yet. It's not just for client to client connections. You can use a MediaServer like Kurento or Jitsi to process your frames and return the output. I've seen Kurento samples for adding filters and stuff. You can build your own modules on how to process the frames. I'd recommend that you check the MediaServer and see if it fits your requirements. Use WebSockets only if you are sure that WebRTC doesn't work for you.
I am in the process of developing a chat application using Javascript. When sending messages from one client to another client, do I have to send it through a server or can I send it directly from a peer-to-peer approach, using something like websockets ?
Welcome to the stage of life where you see the importance of design patterns.
You can start solutionizing with mediator pattern and proxy pattern with web sockets.
Wheater you need a server or not is up to your design.
Technology-wise there are multiple APIs that HTML5 offers you can go through them and make something on your own.
There is a bunch of APIs available with HTML5 and JS.
Start digging on WebSockets, Server-Sent Events, Web Workers.
The server will give you the flexibility of record-keeping while acting as a mediator. Alternatively, you can come up with a pure p2p design with a scheme where every node or user notify other users with their details(IP) for establishing communication. Remember for web socket to work the client need to know what address to connect to. Maybe it can have fixed master nodes. Then you can use observables for polling and other features. Take a look at the BitTorrent protocol for design inspiration.
Get creative and start designing.
There are many ways to do it. I recommend the scheme:
Peer <---> custom websocket server <---> Peer;
I recommend NodeJS with SocketIO.
I am looking to build an web application using node.js and possibly socket.io but I am having a lots of confusion regarding whether to use socket.io or go with plain http. In the app the node.js server will be basically an api server which serves json to the javascript client or may be mobile clients too. The web app will also has chat messeneger for its users, this is where socket.io comes in.
I am not sure whether to use socket.io for the whole app or only for the chat part. Although my app itself could benefit from socket.io but its nothing that I think can't be done using plain http and client making more requests to the server.
I have read at several places that sometimes socket.io can be difficult to scale for more users.
Socket.io often crashes and specially creates probs when there are firewall in clients system.
More importantly.....I checked out socket.io user list and did not find many users, so was curious to know what kind of platform is more know chat network like facebook messenger, google talk etc are built upon, Are any built using http-ajax and continues querying to the server.
Please help me out in solving this question. Some might argue that this is a opinion based question. But what actually I am trying to figure out the implementation of socket.io and its limitation.
I would suggest serving your API over HTTP and leave the real-time business to Socket.io. If you are adverse to using Websockets, like #GeoPheonix stated, you can choose from a variety of transport methods using both socket.io and sockjs (https://github.com/sockjs/sockjs-node).
As far as scaling is concerned, I deployed a socket.io based real-time analytics/tracking service for a very large application with ana average of 400+ concurrent connections with no visible performance impact, but this may depend on the implementation and hardware.
Socket.io is faster than plain http. I recommend you to use it for all since you have to have a chat in first place.
In my case, real-time Texas Hold'em-like game can receive up to 2500 concurrent with one node process. However, if you change transport from websocket to xhr-polling, It can receive like more 10x than pure websocket. Your application is just chat so, I guess a little slow down wouldn't be a problem. If you sure you will exceed this number, yes, scale socket.io is a pain.
This problem will happen only if you open socket.io for port other than 80 and 443. If you have frontend web server with other language already, you can still use socket.io on another subdomain to be able to run on port 80 without conflict with your main frontend web server. Socket.io support cross-domain without a problem.
Have you used trello.com? If not, try it :). It's best for task management or even some Agile thing. They used socket.io. https://c9.io/ is another one. It's online IDE with google doc-like collaborative. One thing to note is xhr-polling trasport in socket.io is the same with http-ajax with long-polling (Better than general ajax). You can read more info at:
http://book.mixu.net/node/ch13.html
I am to build a chat platform over Node.js, that in core, must be able to to provide chat screens 1-1, much like Olark provides
The chat update rate is not priority, but scalability and browser compatibility are.
My question is: Which back-end strategy and which way to transmit, would be best?
EDIT:
Thanks, #Brandon_R. It is just that I am not sure if websocket is the way to go here, I am between it and AJAX.
I want my server to be able to host multiple calls, and websocket do keep a open connection for each client; isn't it limiting?
Socket.io falls back on ajax polling/other transports if websockets are not available and is probably the way to go. You can also disable websockets/other transports if you prefer not to use them.
socket.io 0.8 also has support for "rooms" which will namespace and multiplex your sockets.