[RTW] [dispatch] Does RTC-WEB need to pick a signaling protocol?

[Markus.Isomaki at nokia.com]

Hi,

I pretty much agree with what Bernard and Johathan Rosenberg have said.

There are just a couple of issues I would like to understand better:

-          I suppose these Javascript libraries can be cached on the browser and need not be downloaded every time the application/site is accessed? (These are probably a common practices in Javascript and Browsers but are good to clarify in this discussion.)

-          It may be easy for a web developer to use the client side Javascript library, but I believe the challenge may be bigger on the server side, where scalability etc. become issues. How about the server side, is there something ready-made for that? I suppose the Javascript on the browser can't necessarily connect to vanilla SIP or XMPP servers but some HTTP/WebSocket/TLS tunneling and connection management magic is needed, especially when dealing with HTTP intermediaries. (But presumably the same issues would be faced if we "picked" SIP or XMPP.)

Markus


From: rtc-web-bounces at alvestrand.no [mailto:rtc-web-bounces at alvestrand.no] On Behalf Of ext Bernard Aboba
Sent: 30 January, 2011 07:35
To: Richard Shockey; erik at hookflash.com; jonathan.rosenberg at skype.net
Cc: rtc-web at alvestrand.no; dispatch at ietf.org
Subject: Re: [RTW] [dispatch] Does RTC-WEB need to pick a signaling protocol?

> Duh ... what are we abandoning 10 years of work?

The web is a "generative" platform that supports not just protocols, but also execution of code.   This enables the platform to be extended in a virtually infinite number of ways, including the development of Javascript signaling APIs, without needing to add yet more core code to the browser.  This is the preferred approach unless it can be shown that something *absolutely* must be natively supported (as was discussed at the workshop, STUN/TURN authorization for peer-to-peer media is probably an example of something that *does* need to be native).

As an example of what is possible, there is an excellent Javascript library for XMPP (strophe, see http://code.stanziq.com/strophe/).   Poking around, it would appear that there are a number of Javascript libraries that claim to provide support for SIP (such as http://phono.com/), although I have no idea of their usefulness.

Given the generality and power of the web platform and the ease with which sophisticated signaling libraries can be implemented today, the bar for getting additional code into any browser is going to be quite high.  If you doubt this,  ask the build-master of your favorite browser for the requirements for checkin of a complete SIP stack :)
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