Almitra Karnik's Blog!: What is WebRTC?

What is Real-Time Communication (RTC)?

Real-time communications (RTC) is a term used to refer to any live telecommunications that occur without transmission delays. RTC is nearly instant with minimal latency. RTC data andmessages are not stored between transmission and reception. RTC is generally a peer-to-peer, rather than broadcasting or multicasting. With WebRTC, real-time communications (RTC) capabilities are being built directly into web browsers.

What is WebRTC?

The advent of Web RTC is a big step toward communication being hardware agnostic from the current hardware-dependent model - no need for proprietary hardware such as a phone to have high quality audio or video conversation.

WebRTC is an open-source project enabling plugin-free, Real Time Communications (RTC) in the browser and was started in Fall of 2010
It includes fundamental building blocks for high-quality communications such as network, audio, and video components used in voice and video chat applications. These components, when implemented in a browser, can be accessed through a JavaScript API, enabling developers to easily implement RTC web apps
WebRTC was open-sourced by Google in May 2011 and there are over 1 Billion WebRTC-enabled endpoints (firefox and chrome browsers that support Web RTC) today
The WebRTC project is supported by Chrome, Firefox and Opera. The WebRTC API is supported by Chrome and Firefox.

Why do we need a technology such as Web RTC?

WebRTC is enabling “regular” web developers to start building applications that incorporate voice, video, chat, and data collaboration. Developers no longer need a deep understanding of voice-over-IP (VoIP) or telecommunications to make WebRTC apps. In fact, there are now many WebRTC-related services that enable a developer to simply copy and paste some JavaScript code into their web page to get started.

Historically, Real Time Communications (RTC) have been corporate, proprietary and complex, requiring expensive audio and video technologies to be licensed or developed in house.
Integrating RTC technology with existing content, data and services has been difficult and time consuming, particularly on the web. RTC application development can take 100s of hours and the non-standardization of efforts around it makes it complex and difficult to implement
Plugins can be difficult to deploy, debug, insecure, troubleshoot, test and maintain—and may require licensing and integration with complex, expensive technology.
Traditionally, flash has poor video quality and audio and is also plagued with echo/feedback problems since the software is not designed to respond to varying connection speeds

What are the benefits of Web RTC?

There are various benefits that WebRTC can provide as a technology:

Independence from Proprietary software and hardware: A rich RTC experience is no longer dependent on proprietary software such as Skype. Also there is no need for additional plugins on the user’s end which makes it easy to build, deploy and scale any application. In addition, an application can be developed just once and deployed on multiple operating systems without the need to re-install plugins or customizing it for multiple environments.
Compatibility across platforms: No security loopholes: Applications built on Web RTC are more secure since there is no need for additional browser plugins (which can add security vulnerabilities) or software downloads required to run RTC applications.
Secure Voice and Video : WebRTC has always-on voice and video encryption. The Secure RTP protocol (SRTP) is used for encryption and authentication of both voice and video.
Better Voice Quality than standard VoIP : WebRTC is an adaptive network solution that compensates and adjusts to changing network conditions. It adjusts the communications quality, responds to bandwidth availability, detecting and avoiding congestion.