WebRTC
The browser standard for direct peer connections carrying audio, video, and arbitrary data.
WebRTC is the set of browser APIs enabling direct connections between peers, carrying media streams or arbitrary data channels. It is what makes browser-based video calling and serverless collaborative applications possible without a plugin.
Establishing a connection is the complicated part, and it is why WebRTC is never quite as decentralized as it sounds. Peers must exchange connection descriptions and candidate network paths before any direct link exists, which requires a Signaling Server. Because most peers sit behind network address translation, they use a STUN server to discover their externally visible address, and when a direct path is impossible they fall back to relaying through a TURN server — which carries all the traffic and is therefore the expensive piece of infrastructure the architecture was meant to avoid.
For data rather than media, the data channel is the useful surface: reliable or unreliable, ordered or unordered, and a natural transport for a replicated document type.
The practical caution for anything built on public signaling infrastructure is that its availability is not yours to control. A shared public signaling endpoint can be down, and an application depending on it should say so plainly rather than appearing broken. Running your own is a small service and eliminates the dependency.
See also3
Signaling Server
The small coordination service peers use to find each other before connecting directly.
Networks & Distribution7 connections
Peer-to-Peer
An architecture where participants communicate directly rather than through a central server.
Networks & Distribution11 connections
Conflict-Free Replicated Data Type
A data structure whose replicas can be edited independently and always converge without coordination.
Networks & Distribution7 connections
Related4
Nearby in the graph rather than deliberately chosen. Looser, sometimes surprising.
Linked from12
- Conflict-Free Replicated Data TypeNetworks & Distribution
A data structure whose replicas can be edited independently and always converge without coordination.
- Eventual ConsistencyNetworks & Distribution
A guarantee that replicas converge given no further updates, without guaranteeing when.
- IdempotenceSystems & Tooling
The property that performing an operation twice has the same effect as performing it once.
- IPv6Networks & Distribution
IPv6 exists mainly to end address scarcity, with a large enough space that per-device NAT becomes optional.
- Latency and JitterNetworks & Distribution
Latency is how long a packet takes; jitter is how much that time varies — and the second often matters more.
- NAT TraversalNetworks & Distribution
NAT traversal is the set of tricks two devices behind separate routers use to open a direct connection anyway.
- Network EffectMeaning & Society
A good whose value to each user grows as more people use it.
- Peer-to-PeerNetworks & Distribution
An architecture where participants communicate directly rather than through a central server.
- Signaling ServerNetworks & Distribution
The small coordination service peers use to find each other before connecting directly.
- TCP and UDPNetworks & Distribution
TCP guarantees ordered, reliable delivery at the cost of latency; UDP delivers packets fast with no such promise.
- Virtual Private NetworkNetworks & Distribution
An encrypted tunnel that presents a remote network as local, and the narrow set of things a commercial one actually hides.
- WebhookNetworks & Distribution
A webhook is an HTTP callback a service pushes to you when an event happens, inverting who initiates the request.