3 ms·

I built an ephemeral P2P chat with WebRTC, without servers

19 points by zRinexD 7mo ago

zRinexD 7mo ago
I wanted to be able to talk to anyone in the world without relying on any company's servers. No censorship, no rules, no limits except the ones I set in my own room. So I built this. No signup, no registration. Just create a room with a password, share the code, and anyone can join directly. Everything is peer-to-peer, ephemeral, and disappears when you close the tab. Would love to hear what you think. Code is open source. Link: https://ephemchat.vercel.app/ https://ephemchat.vercel.app/ Source code: https://github.com/zzrinexd/EphemChat https://github.com/zzrinexd/EphemChat
- ranger_danger 7mo ago
  Many users in the world are behind CGNAT or symmetrical NAT, and if both sides are, they will not be able to use WebRTC unless there is a TURN relay server involved. Does your software have a way to account for this?
  - zRinexD 7mo ago
    Great question! Currently it uses Google's public STUN servers, which works for ~85% of connections. For the remaining cases, I'm planning to add a community-maintained list of TURN servers or a P2P fallback mechanism.
    - iamnothere 7mo ago
      You could look into DHT as a way to distribute info about connected nodes, and maybe nodes with the right firewall setup could opt in to being TURN servers.
- ramon156 7mo ago
  "No X, No Y" Thanks for admitting you made heavy use of LLMs and did not read the code. Why should I care?
stainlu 7mo ago
[flagged]
atmanactive 7mo ago
This is great, thanks! Would you accept a Github pull request to translate it to English and several other languages?
- zRinexD 7mo ago
  Absolutely! I'd love to make this accessible to everyone. English translation would be a great start. Let's coordinate on GitHub issues.
michaelsbradley 7mo ago
What about use of TURN, entirely avoided?
elwebmaster 7mo ago
You should mention that it uses PeerJS. That's not without servers. PeerJS runs their own signaling server which you are relying on to connect your peers.
indigodaddy 7mo ago
- does the room vanish after the last user exits? Seems like it? - can the room code be tacked on to the url/slug?
nikisweeting 7mo ago
THis is not without servers, you still use a signaling server for TURN. If you want true serverless you need a side channel to copy the offer/response, e.g. tell the user's to copy paste them as base64 thorugh whatsapp manually or something (https://github.com/pirate/webrtcchat https://github.com/pirate/webrtcchat).
- ssss11 7mo ago
  I wrote a webrtc chat prototype once that used a blockchain contract for the offer/response. It was cool but a little slow and I moved onto other side projects.
  - michaelsbradley 7mo ago
    Could send the offer/response over Waku protocol, some people have experimented with that to good effect.
iamnothere 7mo ago
Matrix was once working on something similar, I wonder what the latest status is. In general, things like this are a great way around current pushes for age verification and mandatory surveillance. Give your friends a link to this, or even a web archive via USB stick, and chat directly without intermediaries. No need to run a server. (Others pointed out you still need a TURN server. True but hopefully there’s a P2P solution for this.)
villgax 7mo ago
Lol do your DD properly before posting
- subscribed 7mo ago
  Not only that, but unfiltered, unedited LLM responses to the comments. shudder, I'd rather talk to the LLM directly than to this wetware shell :)

19 points by zRinexD 7mo ago

I wanted to be able to talk to anyone in the world without relying on any company's servers. No censorship, no rules, no limits except the ones I set in my own room. So I built this. No signup, no registration. Just create a room with a password, share the code, and anyone can join directly. Everything is peer-to-peer, ephemeral, and disappears when you close the tab. Would love to hear what you think. Code is open source. Link: https://ephemchat.vercel.app/ https://ephemchat.vercel.app/ Source code: https://github.com/zzrinexd/EphemChat https://github.com/zzrinexd/EphemChat

ranger_danger 7mo ago
Many users in the world are behind CGNAT or symmetrical NAT, and if both sides are, they will not be able to use WebRTC unless there is a TURN relay server involved. Does your software have a way to account for this?
- zRinexD 7mo ago
  Great question! Currently it uses Google's public STUN servers, which works for ~85% of connections. For the remaining cases, I'm planning to add a community-maintained list of TURN servers or a P2P fallback mechanism.
  - iamnothere 7mo ago
    You could look into DHT as a way to distribute info about connected nodes, and maybe nodes with the right firewall setup could opt in to being TURN servers.
ramon156 7mo ago
"No X, No Y" Thanks for admitting you made heavy use of LLMs and did not read the code. Why should I care?

stainlu 7mo ago

[flagged]

atmanactive 7mo ago

This is great, thanks! Would you accept a Github pull request to translate it to English and several other languages?

zRinexD 7mo ago
Absolutely! I'd love to make this accessible to everyone. English translation would be a great start. Let's coordinate on GitHub issues.

michaelsbradley 7mo ago

What about use of TURN, entirely avoided?

elwebmaster 7mo ago

You should mention that it uses PeerJS. That's not without servers. PeerJS runs their own signaling server which you are relying on to connect your peers.

indigodaddy 7mo ago

- does the room vanish after the last user exits? Seems like it? - can the room code be tacked on to the url/slug?

nikisweeting 7mo ago

THis is not without servers, you still use a signaling server for TURN. If you want true serverless you need a side channel to copy the offer/response, e.g. tell the user's to copy paste them as base64 thorugh whatsapp manually or something (https://github.com/pirate/webrtcchat https://github.com/pirate/webrtcchat).

ssss11 7mo ago
I wrote a webrtc chat prototype once that used a blockchain contract for the offer/response. It was cool but a little slow and I moved onto other side projects.
- michaelsbradley 7mo ago
  Could send the offer/response over Waku protocol, some people have experimented with that to good effect.

iamnothere 7mo ago

Matrix was once working on something similar, I wonder what the latest status is. In general, things like this are a great way around current pushes for age verification and mandatory surveillance. Give your friends a link to this, or even a web archive via USB stick, and chat directly without intermediaries. No need to run a server. (Others pointed out you still need a TURN server. True but hopefully there’s a P2P solution for this.)

villgax 7mo ago

Lol do your DD properly before posting

subscribed 7mo ago
Not only that, but unfiltered, unedited LLM responses to the comments. shudder, I'd rather talk to the LLM directly than to this wetware shell :)