3 ms·

Cloudflare acquired a startup from Seattle that took this idea to its logical conclusion: streaming the DOM itself from the remote browser to provide full brows

by ttul 3y ago

Cloudflare acquired a startup from Seattle that took this idea to its logical conclusion: streaming the DOM itself from the remote browser to provide full browser isolation without compromising rendering quality or speed. It would be nice if such a thing existed as open source, as it’s now buried in their security suite never to see the light of day for most of us.

keepamovin 3y ago
Is that right? Could be a recent acquire if it's DOM mirroring. I heard CF acquired S2 a few years ago, and what S2 did is they created a WebAssembly binary that composited the browser SKIA draw instructions on the client, and streamed the SKIA draw instructions from the server. Not without its issues, but certainly useful. What we do is just stream pixels to the client. Yes it's expensive in terms of bandwidth, relatively. But the advantage is simplicity. And with a close server and bandwidth trending faster and cheaper, with the increasing drive to video consumption across media, I don't see bandwidth as an issue. If you're interested, our code is on GitHub: https://github.com/BrowserBox/BrowserBox https://github.com/BrowserBox/BrowserBox If MailChannels is interested in integrating safe attachment / link opening, we could probably figure something out.
- internetter 3y ago
  > I don't see bandwidth as an issue. The issue is latency
  - keepamovin 3y ago
    That's why close servers are important. Streaming the SKIA instructions will have the same latency issue as streaming pixels. Something changes on the server, and the change is propagated over the network. Even with DOM mirroring (notoriously buggy), changes need to be synced between remote and local. Regarding latency and CloudTabs specifically: we have 7 regions right now and will put up an 8th in Canada (Canada's second, why so popular there, idk). Our latency is good. Responsive, below a perceptible level. For interactive real-time streaming video it's good. Are you experiencing issues? Do you mind me asking what region you connected to?
    - internetter 3y ago
      Yes, hardly anywhere close to a smooth experience. I live in Vermont, my internet is good enough to hit 4k if it tries hard enough.
      - keepamovin 3y ago
        Oh no! That sounds sucky, thanks for your feedback! This will probably seem really annoying but would it be a bad idea for you to do a little screencast of this? Sorry for the bother but it would really help me out, because it would be good to gauge the precise degree. We might need to put a server in US NE. That region is bare, but I thought it would be covered by LA, Texas or Central Canada.

by ttul 3y ago

keepamovin 3y ago

Is that right? Could be a recent acquire if it's DOM mirroring. I heard CF acquired S2 a few years ago, and what S2 did is they created a WebAssembly binary that composited the browser SKIA draw instructions on the client, and streamed the SKIA draw instructions from the server. Not without its issues, but certainly useful. What we do is just stream pixels to the client. Yes it's expensive in terms of bandwidth, relatively. But the advantage is simplicity. And with a close server and bandwidth trending faster and cheaper, with the increasing drive to video consumption across media, I don't see bandwidth as an issue. If you're interested, our code is on GitHub: https://github.com/BrowserBox/BrowserBox https://github.com/BrowserBox/BrowserBox If MailChannels is interested in integrating safe attachment / link opening, we could probably figure something out.

internetter 3y ago
> I don't see bandwidth as an issue. The issue is latency
- keepamovin 3y ago
  That's why close servers are important. Streaming the SKIA instructions will have the same latency issue as streaming pixels. Something changes on the server, and the change is propagated over the network. Even with DOM mirroring (notoriously buggy), changes need to be synced between remote and local. Regarding latency and CloudTabs specifically: we have 7 regions right now and will put up an 8th in Canada (Canada's second, why so popular there, idk). Our latency is good. Responsive, below a perceptible level. For interactive real-time streaming video it's good. Are you experiencing issues? Do you mind me asking what region you connected to?
  - internetter 3y ago
    Yes, hardly anywhere close to a smooth experience. I live in Vermont, my internet is good enough to hit 4k if it tries hard enough.
    - keepamovin 3y ago
      Oh no! That sounds sucky, thanks for your feedback! This will probably seem really annoying but would it be a bad idea for you to do a little screencast of this? Sorry for the bother but it would really help me out, because it would be good to gauge the precise degree. We might need to put a server in US NE. That region is bare, but I thought it would be covered by LA, Texas or Central Canada.