Details on future APIs for P2P communication between browsers

A few days ago, the World Wide Web consortium announced the creation of the Web Real-Time Communications Working Group , which should develop standards for peer-to-peer communications between browsers (the news itself was already discussed in Habré ). If the standards are accepted, it will be possible to transfer video and audio directly between PCs without using a server and separate applications.

For a full-fledged peering between customers requires a whole bunch of technologies:

• API functions for examining the functionality of local devices, such as a camera, microphone, speakers (this is the task of the Device API )
• API functions for capturing stream from local devices (same device API)
• API functions for encoding and other processing of streams (the choice of codecs is beyond the scope of the group)
• API functions for setting up direct P2P connections, including firewall penetration / NAT (the used formats and protocols are also not within the competence of the W3C, this is decided by the relevant IETF RTC-WEB working group )
• API functions for decoding and processing streams (including echo cancellation, stream synchronization, and other functions)
• Display of these media streams in the browser and headphones / speakers (partially covered by HTML5)

For standards to be adopted as recommendations, at least two independent implementations must be developed for each function defined in the specifications, and compatibility between them must be demonstrated.

Several well-known experts have already signed up for the working group, including Richard Tibbett, architect of the Opera platform.

Any qualified developer can join the working group if he meets the requirements for the invited expert (to view the requirements, you must first register on the site). If your employer is a member of W3C (for example, Google, Microsoft, Opera, Mozilla), then you can join the group in a simplified procedure.
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Communication in the working group is organized through an open mailing list , newsgroups are organized once a week, personal meetings 3-4 times a year.

Additionally:
List of technical articles on real-time communication formats and protocols from the RTC-WEB conference in October 2010