[HN Gopher] Peer Calls: WebRTC peer to peer calls for everyone
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       Peer Calls: WebRTC peer to peer calls for everyone
        
       Author : yamrzou
       Score  : 76 points
       Date   : 2024-09-30 16:51 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | koolala wrote:
       | Any web browser could do a p2p call with just a bookmarklet and a
       | chat room / comment section for trading ICE information.
        
         | remram wrote:
         | Isn't that true of anything a web browser can do?
        
         | Sean-Der wrote:
         | You should build that!
        
         | mettamage wrote:
         | Could you elaborate?
        
           | koolala wrote:
           | Want to p2p video call? Here run this script. We don't really
           | use our Browsers like terminals to dynamically run user code.
           | 
           | It would be like a different timeline where a programming
           | console is not a 'dev' feature and anyone is equal at using
           | code. If our computers become smart like AI then all friction
           | for programming could be erased.
           | 
           | It's hard to elaborate on a world where bookmarklets and user
           | scripting becomes a normal thing where we freely tap into our
           | browser's capabilities.
        
         | fidotron wrote:
         | Yes, I feel I am missing something here. Is this just a
         | signalling server with optional SFU or is there more to it?
        
           | Sean-Der wrote:
           | I think people are excited because it's easy to run yourself
           | and well documented.
           | 
           | I find the code base easy to understand since it's built by
           | one developer. It's a consistent read and not
           | sprawling/pointless duplication
        
         | ranger_danger wrote:
         | They could but they're not, that's the difference.
         | 
         | If you think that method can become popular, then by all
         | means... be the change.
        
       | ranger_danger wrote:
       | I applaud the real support for TURN (and TCP ICE) and the
       | emphasis on explaining the (IMO very common) issue properly
       | unlike so many other WebRTC projects that think the majority of
       | people will never need it.
       | 
       | I know Firefox now supports outgoing TCP ICE, but what about
       | incoming TCP connections? I wasn't able to find an answer easily
       | from googling.
        
         | Sean-Der wrote:
         | I don't think Chrome or FireFox support passive ICE-TCP
         | Candidates.
         | 
         | The assumption is that two clients are in the same LAN they
         | would use UDP anyway. If are in two differents NATs doing
         | traversal with TCP isn't support. I have read that it is
         | possible, not something I have tried myself though.
        
       | 1oooqooq wrote:
       | every time i have to deal with ice and webrtc, i wonder if it is
       | easier to ship a mirai style bot which would hack the modems from
       | the lan side which is even easier than from the wan side, and and
       | just add the portforwards.
        
         | Sean-Der wrote:
         | My dream would be if WebRTC Agents would experiment with Port
         | Control Protocol.
         | 
         | I don't know if it is the answer, but a world without
         | dependence on STUN servers sounds pretty amazing. I can see why
         | it would feel like kludge, but how could would it be to remove
         | that dependency.
         | 
         | My other wishlist item is to allow mDNS for signaling.
         | Something like https://github.com/pion/offline-browser-
         | communication. It is so silly that I need to exchange a
         | Offer/Answer using a remote server to start a session with a IP
         | Camera in my LAN.
        
           | marcodiego wrote:
           | You can user Tor and expose a service running on your lan to
           | the whole world.
        
             | noident wrote:
             | I can count to 30 before the onion service running my
             | personal wiki loads. Tor is awesome but onion services are
             | really, really slow!
        
           | SahAssar wrote:
           | > My other wishlist item is to allow mDNS for signaling.
           | 
           | If you load a webpage with from a mDNS address of the camera
           | what other steps are needed? Your browser and the camera
           | should be able to exchange SDP and connect without any third
           | party.
        
           | IgorPartola wrote:
           | You know what's easier than all this happy crappy? Goddamn
           | IPv6. How many engineer-hours have been spent trying to work
           | around NAT and IPv4 which could have been spent implementing
           | IPv6? Every browser tab could have its own publicly routable
           | address if we wanted to. And the more work arounds we create
           | the less pressure there is to get over the hump and treat
           | IPv4 as the weird legacy protocol instead of treating IPv6 as
           | the weird new protocol.
           | 
           | I guess engineer activism is all there is really left to do.
           | Enable dual stack, write your code to be IPv6-first (it can
           | automatically do IPv4 connectivity if enabled so really you
           | only need to support one stack and the OS will translate for
           | you; this doesn't mean you can avoid having IPv4 addresses if
           | you want to have your service IPv4 accessible, just that your
           | code can pretend like every address is an IPv6 address). Test
           | your code without IPv4 connectivity. If you reference
           | localhost, don't use 127.0.0.1 preferring _localhost_
           | instead. Don't be the reason the next engineer has to say
           | "well this codebase isn't IPv6 compliant so we can't enable
           | it".
        
       | Muromec wrote:
       | Another reason to use ipv6 and just memorize your address to also
       | not depend on dns
        
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       (page generated 2024-09-30 23:00 UTC)