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

[Harald Alvestrand]

On 01/30/11 22:50, Bernard Aboba wrote:
>
> One approach is to tunnel the signaling protocol over HTTP.   This 
> requires support for bi-directional communications, such as can be 
> provided by BOSH, or Websockets.   In these architectures the web 
> client communicates via HTTP with a "Connection Manager"  which 
>  encapsulates/decapsulates the signaling messages and routes them 
> appropriately on the backend.
>
I think that no matter what we define (or not) as the signalling 
protocol, it will be carried in a fashion that looks like HTTP or HTTPS 
(most probably HTTPS) to intermediaries and firewalls.
Not using WebSockets (if it's done yet) seems like a strange choice; if 
WebSockets are usable for anything, they should be usable for this 
application.
>
> To provide interoperability, specifications for encapsulation of 
> signaling messages within HTTP are required.  Examples include:
>
> XEP-0124 <http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0124.html>: 
> Bidirectional-streams Over Synchronous HTTP (BOSH)
>
> XEP-0206 <http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0206.html>:  XMPP over BOSH
>
> An XMPP Sub-protocol for Websocket 
> <http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-moffitt-xmpp-over-websocket>
>
> Information on BOSH implementations can be found here:
>
> http://xmpp.org/about-xmpp/technology-overview/bosh/#impl
>
> *From:*rtc-web-bounces at alvestrand.no 
> [mailto:rtc-web-bounces at alvestrand.no] *On Behalf Of 
> *Markus.Isomaki at nokia.com
> *Sent:* Sunday, January 30, 2011 2:45 PM
> *To:* bernard_aboba at hotmail.com; richard at shockey.us; 
> 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?
>
> 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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