4 ms·
WebRTC requires the use of a centralised signalling server for the initial connection between two peers. I feel many miss this point when reading about WebRTC-e
by liamzebedee 11y ago
WebRTC requires the use of a centralised signalling server for the initial connection between two peers. I feel many miss this point when reading about WebRTC-enabled projects. Even if you do have Universal Plug and Play which port forwards automatically (and thus you can communicate directly between two peers), you still need this centralised signalling server.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but this poses a problem if you ever want to take WebRTC further (i.e. in a self-hosted mesh network).
- chc4 11y agoYou need a server for holepunching/STUN via IPv4, but not for IPv6 since each client has a unique IP instead of being behind the router's address.
- liamzebedee 11y agoI've setup Minecraft/web servers which required no server for holepunching. Just plain old IPv4 with port forwarding.
- chc4 11y agoThe "with port forwarding" is the problem there. That assumes you have access to your NAT resolver to add the rule, which isn't a fair assumption to hold. People at colleges, businesses, hosted events, etc. need to do NAT traversal (or be on IPv6) in order to do P2P. I didn't see that you mentioned UPnP in the OP though, sorry. I'd assume downloading metadata from a signalling server if you don't need it for traversal is completely optional - most P2P networks have an initial list of peers to connect to to bootstrap new clients.