About WebRTC

Owned by alon.men@zixi.com
Last updated: 27 Aug 2020
1 min read

WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communication) is a free, open-source project that provides web browsers and mobile applications with real-time communication (RTC) via simple application programming interfaces (APIs). It allows audio and video communication to work inside web pages by allowing direct peer-to-peer communication, eliminating the need to install plugins or download native apps. Supported by Apple, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, and Opera, WebRTC is being standardized through the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

 WebRTC advantages include:

  • As an HTTP protocol, WebRTC can traverse Firewalls, allowing the monitoring of streams, while the Zixi Broadcaster that is serving the stream sits behind a Firewall/NAT, all without the need to open specific Firewall ports or configure a public IP address. 

  • WebRTC is a low latency protocol that can achieve sub second latency (e.g. several hundreds of milliseconds.