News from Industry

Kranky Geek is coming to town!

WebRTC is maturing. We’re 5 years into this roller coaster and it seems most companies have already understood that they need to use WebRTC in one way or another. To many, this is going to be an excruciatingly painful journey. They will need to change their business model, think differently about how they develop products and even rewrite their core values.

One of the reasons we decided to launch Kranky Geek over two years ago was to have a place where developers can teach developers about WebRTC. Somewhere that isn’t already “tainted” with the telecom views of the world – not because they are bad – just because WebRTC can accomplish so much more. What we are going to do next with WebRTC takes place in November and will happen in two separate locations:

Kranky Geek San Francisco

San Francisco is where Kranky Geek started and where I feel at home when it comes to this event. We will be doing our 3rd Kranky Geek event in San Francisco (and 4th in total).

It will take place on November 18, at Google’s office on Spear street.

Our focus this time around is going to be mobile. We’ve got sessions lined up that should cover most of the aspects related to WebRTC and mobile. Things like using React, cross platform development, video compression, specific aspects in iOS as well as specific aspects in Android related to WebRTC.

If you are into mobile development with real time communications – then this is an event you don’t want to pass up.

There is also a new attendance fee that was added – $10 that gets donated to Girl Develop It. You may notice we don’t have a woman speaker this time – it is hard to find women speakers in this domain, so if you are one or know one – make sure to let us know for our future events.

I’d like to thank our sponsors who made this thing possible:

• Google – who brought us WebRTC in the first place and is instrumental to the success that is Kranky Geek
• TokBox – sponsoring both the San Francisco and São Paulo events. They will share their experiences with mobile aspects of WebRTC related to Android
• Twilio – sponsoring both the San Francisco and São Paulo events. Their session in San Francisco will cover WebRTC and the Internet of Things
• Vidyo – a new sponsor that is joining the Kranky Geek family, and probably the best one suited to talk about real time video compression technologies that make sense in mobile devices

Kranky Geek São Paulo

This will be my first time in Brazil and also the first time we run Kranky Geek in Barzil. As with San Francisco, the event is hosted at Google’s office in São Paulo.

Our focus for São Paulo will be back to the basics of WebRTC. We are trying this time to fill in the gaps – share resources and insights that developers who use WebRTC in their daily activities need. This is why we have a few sessions that are targeted at debugging and troubleshooting WebRTC in this event.

Registration for the São Paulo event is free.

For the São Paulo event, we got the help of a few sponsors as well:

• Google
• TokBox – at São Paulo, TokBox will share with us how to deal with device and connectivity issues when it comes to WebRTC sessions
• Twilio – will be looking at the makeup of a WebRTC service, as the browser implementation of WebRTC is the beginning of the journey only
• WebRTC.ventures – who are sponsoring this event for the first time, will give the overview and introduction to WebRTC
• Callstats.io – will explain what you can find in getstats() and how to use it

See you there

I have my own session to prepare for the upcoming Kranky Geek, along with a lot of work to make these two events our best yet. There are also changes and modifications that need to make their way to the website –  but rest assured – these events have great content lined up for you.

If you happen to be in the area, my suggestion is come to the event – it is the best place to learn and interact with people who know way better than I do what WebRTC is in and out.

And if you want to meet me – just contact me. I’ll be “in town” for an extra day or so.

–

See you all at Kranky Geek!

The post Get Ready for Kranky Geek San Francisco AND São Paulo appeared first on BlogGeek.me.

WebRTC 1.0 uses SDP for negotiating capabilities between parties.  While there are a growing number of objects coming to WebRTC to avoid this protocol from the 90’s , the reality is SDP will be with us for some time. If you want to do things like change codecs or adjust bandwidth limits, then you’re going to need to “munge” […]

The post How to limit WebRTC bandwidth by modifying the SDP appeared first on webrtcHacks.

FOSDEM is one of the world's premier meetings of free software developers,
with over five thousand people attending each year. FOSDEM 2017
takes place 4-5 February 2017 in Brussels, Belgium. https://fosdem.org

This email contains information about:
- Real-Time communications dev-room and lounge,
- speaking opportunities,
- volunteering in the dev-room and lounge,
- related events around FOSDEM, including the XMPP summit,
- social events (the legendary FOSDEM Beer Night and Saturday night dinners
provide endless networking opportunities),
- the Planet aggregation sites for RTC blogs

Call for participation - Real Time Communications (RTC)
=======================================================

The Real-Time dev-room and Real-Time lounge is about all things involving
real-time communication, including: XMPP, SIP, WebRTC, telephony,
mobile VoIP, codecs, peer-to-peer, privacy and encryption. The dev-room
is a successor to the previous XMPP and telephony dev-rooms.
We are looking for speakers for the dev-room and volunteers and
participants for the tables in the Real-Time lounge.

The dev-room is only on Saturday, 4 February 2017. The lounge will
be present for both days.

To discuss the dev-room and lounge, please join the FSFE-sponsored
Free RTC mailing list: https://lists.fsfe.org/mailman/listinfo/free-rtc

To be kept aware of major developments in Free RTC, without being on the
discussion list, please join the Free-RTC Announce list:
http://lists.freertc.org/mailman/listinfo/announce

Speaking opportunities
----------------------

Note: if you used FOSDEM Pentabarf before, please use the same account/username

Real-Time Communications dev-room: deadline 23:59 UTC on 17 November.
Please use the Pentabarf system to submit a talk proposal for the
dev-room. On the "General" tab, please look for the "Track" option and
choose "Real-Time devroom". https://penta.fosdem.org/submission/FOSDEM17/

Other dev-rooms and lightning talks: some speakers may find their topic is
in the scope of more than one dev-room. It is encouraged to apply to more
than one dev-room and also consider proposing a lightning talk, but please
be kind enough to tell us if you do this by filling out the notes in the form.
You can find the full list of dev-rooms at
https://www.fosdem.org/2017/schedule/tracks/
and apply for a lightning talk at https://fosdem.org/submit

Main track: the deadline for main track presentations is 23:59 UTC
31 October. Leading developers in the Real-Time Communications
field are encouraged to consider submitting a presentation to
the main track at https://fosdem.org/submit

First-time speaking?
--------------------

FOSDEM dev-rooms are a welcoming environment for people who have never
given a talk before. Please feel free to contact the dev-room administrators
personally if you would like to ask any questions about it.

Submission guidelines
---------------------

The Pentabarf system will ask for many of the essential details. Please
remember to re-use your account from previous years if you have one.

In the "Submission notes", please tell us about:
- the purpose of your talk
- any other talk applications (dev-rooms, lightning talks, main track)
- availability constraints and special needs

You can use HTML and links in your bio, abstract and description.

If you maintain a blog, please consider providing us with the
URL of a feed with posts tagged for your RTC-related work.

We will be looking for relevance to the conference and dev-room themes,
presentations aimed at developers of free and open source software about
RTC-related topics.

Please feel free to suggest a duration between 20 minutes and 55 minutes
but note that the final decision on talk durations will be made by the
dev-room administrators. As the two previous dev-rooms have been
combined into one, we may decide to give shorter slots than in previous
years so that more speakers can participate.

Please note FOSDEM aims to record and live-stream all talks.
The CC-BY license is used.

Volunteers needed
=================

To make the dev-room and lounge run successfully, we are looking for
volunteers:

- FOSDEM provides video recording equipment and live streaming,
volunteers are needed to assist in this
- organizing one or more restaurant bookings (dependending upon number of
participants) for the evening of Saturday, 4 February
- participation in the Real-Time lounge
- helping attract sponsorship funds for the dev-room to pay for the
Saturday night dinner and any other expenses
- circulating this Call for Participation to other mailing lists

See the mailing list discussion for more details about volunteering:
https://lists.fsfe.org/pipermail/free-rtc/2016-October/000285.html

Related events - XMPP and RTC summits
=====================================

The XMPP Standards Foundation (XSF) has traditionally held a summit
in the days before FOSDEM. There is discussion about a similar
summit taking place on 2 and 3 February 2017
http://wiki.xmpp.org/web/Summit_21 - please join the mailing
list for details: http://mail.jabber.org/mailman/listinfo/summit

We are also considering a more general RTC or telephony summit,
potentially in collaboration with the XMPP summit.
Please join the Free-RTC mailing list and send an email if you would
be interested in participating, sponsoring or hosting such an event.

Social events and dinners
=========================

The traditional FOSDEM beer night occurs on Friday, 3 February.

On Saturday night, there are usually dinners associated with
each of the dev-rooms. Most restaurants in Brussels are not so
large so these dinners have space constraints and reservations are
essential. Please subscribe to the Free-RTC mailing list for
further details about the Saturday night dinner options and how
you can register for a seat: https://lists.fsfe.org/mailman/listinfo/free-rtc

Spread the word and discuss
===========================

If you know of any mailing lists where this CfP would be relevant, please
forward this email. If this dev-room excites you, please blog or microblog
about it, especially if you are submitting a talk.

If you regularly blog about RTC topics, please send details about your
blog to the planet site administrators:

All projects http://planet.freertc.org [email protected]

XMPP http://planet.jabber.org [email protected]

SIP http://planet.sip5060.net [email protected]
(Español) http://planet.sip5060.net/es/ [email protected]

Please also link to the Planet sites from your own blog or web site as
this helps everybody in the free real-time communications community.

Contact
=======

For any private queries, contact us directly using the address
[email protected] and for any other queries please ask on
the Free-RTC mailing list:
https://lists.fsfe.org/mailman/listinfo/free-rtc

The 7th edition of FUSECO Forum, organized by Fraunhofer Fokus Institute, takes place between November 3-4, 2017, in Berlin, Germany:

• https://www.fokus.fraunhofer.de/fuseco-forum-2016

This year, the focus is on understanding application drivers and technology evolution towards softwarized 5G networks and the industrial internet revolution.This year the FUSECO Forum will be accompanied by 2 additional international events on 5G, all of them held during the same week in Berlin. Don´t miss any of them and get ready for 5G and the Industrial Internet of Things!

No article today.

My course is launching today: Advanced WebRTC Architecture Course.

I’ve got some solid attendance for it, along with a good bulk of high quality material lined up.

Hopefully, this will be a success.

If you are taking the course – then good luck and please share your thoughts with me – I’ve built this course for you and I’d like you to benefit from it as much as possible.

If you aren’t taking it but still want to attend – feel free to enroll. I’ll be closing up course signups end of this week, with no clear indication if and when I’ll be running it next.

Now quiet please – there are people studying in here. Somewhere. Hopefully.

The post Quiet please – people are studying appeared first on BlogGeek.me.

WebRTC course starts Monday next week.

At long last, the wait will be coming to an end and my recent sleepless nights as well. I’ve been working these past months to put up the content for the course, not knowing how it will end up.

Most of the materials have been recorded, uploaded and prepared already, waiting for me to just manually add all the people who enrolled. There’s a lot of material in that course, and a lot more that I am sure is still missing in there. Trying to cover WebRTC in its entirety isn’t easy.

Through the process of putting this stuff up and out there, I’ve learned a lot myself.

 

The course is split into 7 sections:

1. The basics of WebRTC – explanation of what WebRTC is, a review of its APIs and call flows, and general knowledge. This should get you up to speed about what it is and will probably place you among the first 10,000 people in the world who know it at this depth. It will also enable you to read the stuff that is out there about WebRTC more critically
2. Networking basics – while we all use the Internet, many of us don’t know the distinction between TCP and UDP, or what Websockets really is. This section tries to put these things in perspective and lay the groundwork for later sections. It will be super useful for VoIP developers but also great for web developers. It also covers the NAT traversal challenge and the solutions found in WebRTC for it
3. WebRTC signaling – signaling isn’t part of WebRTC, but is often something to contemplate. This section dives into the alternatives of signaling that are available, different types of transport protocols, as well as a lesson on SDP. It also covers the security aspects relevant to WebRTC – and it it sheds some light on FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) around WebRTC
4. Codecs – I love codecs. I know little about them, but somehow, more than most. This section explains voice and video codecs, while focusing on what you need to know about them in the context of WebRTC. You won’t be able to implement a codec after this section (I never implemented a codec), but you will gain the understanding necessary for you to decide the codecs for your own scenarios
5. Media processing – media processing is at the heart of most decisions you will take in your use case. In this section, I take the time to review how RTP and RTCP work, and then dive into different architectures and processes you might need in your back end. Things like mixing, routing and recording
6. 3rd party frameworks and services – here we will be diverting from the beaten path of “normal course material”, and instead of talking about specifications, standards and capabilities, we will look into the various products and open source frameworks that are out there. We will review them and see which one fits what use case, and also gain an understanding of the various routes available to us, trying to match our company’s DNA and requirements to the alternatives at hand
7. Common WebRTC design patterns – this is where we will take specific scenarios and challenges, from a list of those I see every day when people reach out to me, and analyze them. Go over the scenario, break it down to requirements and then map them into architectural alternatives. The idea here is to give you the tools to do such things on your own with your products

Most of the lessons are already ready. There are around 6 lessons that I still need to write. Hopefully, they will be available on launch day, but if not, then the following week.

 

I want to answer a few quick questions here – things I’ve been asked time and again in the past month:

Is this a one-time thing?

Yes and no.

The course takes place October 24 and lasts for 2 months. Those who enroll for office hours get an extended duration of 4 months (as well as office hours).

I don’t plan on doing this an ongoing thing where you can enroll whenever and do the course. I will be taking the time throughout these two months to listen to the students and see if there’s anything that requires updating in “real time”. I can’t do it if this is an ongoing thing.

This might change in the future, but for now, there’s this timing.

I might do that some months from now, after I rest a bit from the effort and decide if it makes financial sense to run it again.

If you have your own timing issues, then understand that the course is self-paced. You can “leave” for a week or two and come back, do it faster or slower.

Is the course for me?

I can’t really say.

Here are a few types of students that I have already enrolled for the course:

• Developers who need to start using WebRTC, more often than not through a framework that was already selected. They know how it works, but are looking to gain deeper understanding so they can troubleshoot issues or add features to their product
• Product managers who want to learn and understand more about WebRTC. Mostly to give them the language necessary to talk with their developers. And mainly to keep the developers honest
• Teams who work with WebRTC, so they can get the experience together as a team and improve their proficiency
• Testers wanting to understand the technology better and find effective ways to design their test plans

The course doesn’t include too much code. There’s the occasional piece of code shown, but the idea isn’t to explain to you how to develop with WebRTC. In truth – most of you won’t develop with WebRTC directly anyway – you’ll end up using a framework or a third party for that.

The intent is to give you the understanding of the limits and capabilities of WebRTC. To know how to yield this amazing tool and how to use it effectively in your product.

How is the course conducted?

If you enrolled, then you will be receiving an email a day or two prior to the course.

I will be registering you to the course mini-site inside the BlogGeek.me website. Once you login, you will be able to access all course sections and lessons.

Each lesson has a page of its own in the site. Most lessons have a recorded video session as the main bulk of it, along with text and additional reading material. In most cases, that additional reading material is important.

You can “tune in” to any lesson you wish and learn it at your own pace and in your free time.

There is an online forum for the course. Students will be able to raise their questions, issues and feedback there. If things require changes on my end, I’ll try making the changes to the lessons as we move along, maybe even adding course materials and lessons if the need will arise. I will also be using the forum to ask questions myself, and check out on the progress of students.

For those taking office hours, these will take place twice a week at different times to accommodate different time zones. In there, I will answer questions as they come and basically make myself available to you “in the flesh”. I haven’t decided yet which WebRTC service to use for that – suggestions are welcome.

I am still debating if I should use quizes as part of the course, placing them at the end of each section or not. If you have an opinion – please voice it (even if you’re not going to attend the course).

 

Enroll today

Learn how to design the best architecture for our WebRTC service in this new Advanced WebRTC Architecture course.

 

The course starts next week.

There’s a Q&A page that may answer additional questions you might have.

Official course syllabus is also available in PDF form.

I’d be happy to meet you if you decide to enroll to the course. This is a new thing for me and I an quite excited about it.

If you are not sure about the course – email me. If there’s no fit – I’ll tell you immediately. If this might help you, I’ll explain to you what you will gain from it so you can make a better decision

Until next Monday – have an awesome week.

The post Advanced WebRTC Acrhitecture Course – Updates appeared first on BlogGeek.me.

The FreeSWITCH 1.6.12 release is here!

This is also a routine maintenance release. Change Log and source tarball information below.

Release files are located here:

• Tarball: http://files.freeswitch.org/releases/freeswitch/freeswitch-1.6.12.tar.gz
• Packaging: https://freeswitch.org/confluence/display/FREESWITCH/Installation

New features that were added:

• FS-9242 [mod_verto] Convert to adapter.js
• FS-8955 [verto_communicator] Adding DTMF shortcuts and handling DTMF history on DTMF widget
• FS-9601 [mod_opus] Make adjustable bitrate mutually exclusive with FEC enforcing on the decreasing trend, add step calculation for bitrate adjustment, fix bug on context settings
• FS-8644 [mod_opus] OPUS_SET_BITRATE(), codec control and estimators for packet loss and RTT (with Kalman filters) to detect a slow or congested link. Feature enabled with “adjust-bitrate” in opus.conf.xml – it’s a feedback loop with incoming RTCP.

Improvements in build system, cross-platform support, and packaging:

• FS-8623 [build] Fixed sun studio build errors building libvpx
• FS-9553 [core] Refactor video-on-hold
• FS-9616 [libvpx] Update libvpx to latest upstream
• FS-9618 [libyuv] Update libyuv to latest upstream

The following bugs were squashed:

• FS-9574 [mod_verto] We shouldn’t print data set on the buffer because of the potential security issues
• FS-9508 [verto_communicator] Adding AGC option on settings, enabled by default
• FS-7876 [verto_communicator] Adding hold button for video calls
• FS-9242 [verto.js] Fixed screen share for chrome to work in VC with additional camera
• FS-9586 [mod_local_stream] Fixed the local_stream video queue sticking when not being read from
• FS-9610 [core] Video keyframe requests not being propagated properly
• FS-9612 [core] RTCP-MUX wrongly enabled in cases where answer contains RTCP but offer didn’t / remote
  address not obtained in UDPTL mode
• FS-9580 [core] Add auto adjust for RTCP separate from RTP for sync NAT
• FS-9548 [core] Crash on Invite due to bad config for sip profile
• FS-9498 [mod_conference] Fixed a regression with 100% cpu

The future of streaming includes WebRTC.

Disclaimer: I am an advisor for Peer5.

If you look at reports from Ericsson or Cisco what you’ll notice is the growth of video as a large portion of what we do over the Internet. As video takes up an order of magnitude more data to pass than almost anything else we share today this is no wonder. Here are a few numbers from Cisco’s forecast from Feb 2016:

• Mobile video traffic accounted for 55 percent of total mobile data traffic in 2015. Mobile video traffic now accounts for more than half of all mobile data traffic
• Three-fourths of the world’s mobile data traffic will be video by 2020. Mobile video will increase 11-fold between 2015 and 2020, accounting for 75 percent of total mobile data traffic by the end of the forecast period

Source: Cisco

I think there are a few reasons for this growth:

1. While we’re continuously moving towards HD video resolutions, 4K is already being experimented with. The increase in resolution and frame rates is inevitable. We’ve seen this growth with the displays of our devices and with the cameras we hold in our pockets. Time to see it in the videos we play back
2. The hegemony of content creators is broken. User generated content is growing rapidly. It started with YouTube, moving to services such as Vine and now live streaming services such as Periscope, Facebook Live, YouNow and others. More creators = more video sources
3. Viewing habits are changing. We are no longer interested in TV series broadcasted on air but rather pick and choose what we want to watch and when we want to watch, from an exponentially larger pool and variety of content

The challenge really begins when you look at the Internet technologies available to stream these massive amounts of content:

• Flash / RTMP. This is how we streamed video over our internet for years, and that period is coming to an end. Google announced limiting its support to Flash by requiring users to opt in on sites that make use of it. This is causing large content sites to scurry towards HTML5 based streaming technologies
• HLS. HTTP Live Streaming – Apple’s mechanism used on iOS devices. And one that is enforced if you wish to stream to iOS devices. To some extent, this makes it “necessary” to support it elsewhere – so there’s also an HLS player for browsers
• MPEG-DASH – the standardized cousin of HLS
• Something else, not necessarily intended for video streaming

The challenge with HLS and MPEG-DASH is latency. While this might be suitable for many use cases, there are those who require low latency live streaming:

From my course on WebRTC architecture

For those who can use HLS and MPEG-DASH, there’s this nagging issue of needing to use CDNs and pay for expensive bandwidth costs (when you stream that amount of video, everything becomes expensive).

Which brings me to the recent deal between Peer5 and Dailymotion. To bring you up to speed:

• Dailymotion is huge
  • Similarweb ranks them #4 in their category, after YouTube, Netflix and niconico
  • Their site states they have 300 million unique monthly visitors and they stream 3.5 billion videos a month
• Peer5 is a startup dealing with peer assisted delivery
  • They offload video traffic and reduce strain on servers and CDNs by sending video data across peers
  • They do this by using WebRTC’s data channel
• Some of the traffic of Dailymotion now flows via Peer5’s technology, and that’s now official

There are other startups with similar technologies to Peer5, but this is the first time any of them has publicized a customer win, and with such a high profile to top it off.

In a way, this validates the technology as well as the need for new mechanisms to assist in our current state of video streaming – especially in large scales.

WebRTC seem to fit nicely in here, and in more than one way only. I am seeing more cases where companies use WebRTC either as a complementary technology or even as the main broadcast technology they use for their service.

It is also the reason I’ve added this important topic to my upcoming course – Advanced WebRTC Architecture. There is a lesson dedicated to low latency live broadcasting, where I explain the various technologies and how WebRTC can be brought into the mix in several different combinations.

If you would like to learn more about WebRTC and see how to best fit it into your scenario – this course is definitely for you. It starts October 24, so enroll now.

Learn how to design the best architecture for our WebRTC service in this new Advanced WebRTC Architecture course.

 

The post Dailymotion, Peer5 and the Future of Streaming appeared first on BlogGeek.me.

This year the global edition of Telecom Application Developer Hackathon is organized during October 14 -16, 2016, with many locations world wide, among them being also Berlin. For more details, see:

• http://tadhack.com/2016/global/

TADHack is the global meeting place for developers who want to learn, share, code and create using the tools and technologies available in telecommunications.The Berlin event is hosted by VoIP Lab, part of Buro 2.0 co-working space, being coordinated by Dennis P. Kersten during October 15-16, 2016.Several Kamailio developers from Berlin area are participating to the event. Any developer can participate for free, you are welcome to join us in Berlin or anywhere around the world — you can do it also remotely, from your living room or your preferred working space. Think about an idea to code, hack and demo it for wining some nice goodies from sponsors!Happy telecom hacking!

The next edition of Kazoo Project Conference takes place in San Francisco, CA, USA, during October 17-18, 2016.Kazoo is a flexible cloud PBX platform, released under open source, developed by 2600hz.com, with the telephony engine built using Kamailio, FreeSwitch and an Erlang controller, all wrapped nicely with a web management interface, doing all sorts of things from account management to billing and monitoring.If you want to start a cloud telephony business or get into this market as a reseller, KazooCon is an event that you should definitely attend. More details about the conference are available at:

• http://kazoocon.com

Kamailio incorporates a module with the same name, kazoo, but besides it, the developers from Kazoo project contributed a consistent effort in advancing the presence and database modules. Therefore expect to meet a lot of Kamailio friends around at KazooCon and participate in many interesting discussions.Thanks for flying Kamailio!

This week mod_opus got a cool new feature that allows the detection of a slow or contaminated link. And verto is converting to adapter.js as well as getting DTMF shortcuts. The FreeSWITCH configuration audit is ongoing with initial minor commits and will continue throughout the year. If you are looking to volunteer to help with that or would like more information email [email protected] or join the Bug Hunt on Tuesdays at 12:00pm Central Time.

Join us Wednesdays at 12:00 CT for some more FreeSWITCH fun! And, head over to freeswitch.com to learn more about FreeSWITCH support.

New features that were added:

• FS-8644 [mod_opus] OPUS_SET_BITRATE(), codec control and estimators for packet loss and RTT (with Kalman filters) to detect a slow or congested link. Feature enabled with “adjust-bitrate” in opus.conf.xml – it’s a feedback loop with incoming RTCP.
• FS-9242  [mod_verto] Convert to adapter.js
• FS-8955  [verto_communicator] Adding DTMF shortcuts and handling DTMF history on DTMF widget

Improvements in build system, cross-platform support, and packaging:

• FS-8623  [build] Fixed sun studio build errors building libvpx
• FS-9553  [core] Refactor video-on-hold

The following bugs were squashed:

• FS-9548  [core] Crash on Invite due to bad config for sip profile
• FS-9580  [core] Add auto adjust for RTCP separate from RTP for sync NAT
• FS-9574  [mod_verto] We shouldn’t print data sent on the buffer because of the potential security issues
• FS-9508  [verto_communicator] Adding AGC option on settings, enabled by default
• FS-7876  [verto_communicator] Adding hold button for video calls
• FS-9242  [verto.js] Fixed screen share for chrome to work in VC with additional camera
• FS-9586  [mod_local_stream] Fixed the local_stream video queue sticking when not being read from

WebRTC isn’t limited to JavaScript.

This is something I don’t get asked directly, but it does pop up from time to time. Especially when people come up with a specific language in mind and ask if it is suitable for WebRTC.

While the answer is almost always yes, I think a quick explanation of where programming languages meet WebRTC exactly is in order.

We will start with a small “diagram”, to show where we can find WebRTC related entities and move from there.

We’ve got both client and server entities with WebRTC, and I think the above depicts the main ones. There are more as your service gets more complicated, but that’s all an issue of scaling and pure development not directly related to WebRTC.

 

Learn how to design the best architecture for our WebRTC service in this new Advanced WebRTC Architecture course.

 

So what do we have here?

Web app

The web app is what most people think about when they think WebRTC.

This is what ends up running in the browser, loaded from an HTML and its derivatives.

What this means is that the language you end up with is Java Script.

Mobile app

When it comes to the mobile domain, there are two ways to end up with WebRTC. The first is by having the web app served inside a mobile browser, which brings you back to Java Script.

The more common approach though is to use WebRTC inside an app. You end up compiling and linking the WebRTC codebase as an SDK.

The languages here?

• C, C++ for the low level stuff that makes up WebRTC. In all likelihood, you won’t need to handle this (either because it will just work or because you’ll be outsourcing it to someone else)
• Java for native Android app development
• Objective-C and/or Switft for native iOS app development

There’s also the alternative of C# via Xamarin or Java Script again if you use something like Crosswalk. With these approaches, someone should already have WebRTC wrapped for you in these platforms.

Embedded app

Embedded is where things get interesting.

There are cases where you want devices to run WebRTC for one reason or another.

Two main approaches here will dictate the languages of choice:

1. C, C++ if you port the webrtc.org code base and use it. And then whatever else you fancy on top of it
2. Any language you wish (Java anyone?), while implementing what you need of the WebRTC protocol (=what goes on the network) on your own

In general, here you’ll be going to lower levels of abstraction, getting as close as possible to the machine language (but stopping at C most probably).

TURN server

STUN and TURN servers are also necessary. Most likely – you won’t be needing to do a thing about them besides compiling, configuring and running them.

So no programming languages here.

I would note that the popular open source alternatives are all written in C. Again – this doesn’t matter.

Media server

Media servers come in different shapes and sizes. I’ve covered them here recently, discussing Jitsi/Kurento and later Kurento/Janus.

The programming languages here depend on the media server itself. Jitsi and Kurento are Java based. Janus is mostly C. In most cases – you wouldn’t care.

Media servers are usually entities that you communicate with via REST or Websocket, so you can just use whatever language you like on the controlling side. It is a very popular choice to juse Node.js (=Java Script) in front of a Kurento server for example. It also brings us to the last entity.

App/Signaling server

The funny thing is that this is where the question is mostly targeted at. The application and/or signaling server is what stitches everything together. It serves the web app, communicates with the mobile and embedded apps. It offers the details of the TURN server and handles any ephemeral passwords with it, it controls the media servers.

And it is also where the bulk of the development happens since it holds the business logic of the application.

And here the answer is rather simple – use whatever you want.

• Node.js and Java Script are great and popular choice (there are good reasons for that)
• Java seems to be a thing in enterprises though for the life of me I just can’t understand why
• PHP works well. It is used by many WordPress plugins for WebRTC
• Erlang seems to be something that adventurous developers like to adopt – and like
• Ruby and Python are also good choices
• .Net is something I’ve seen once or twice used

In general, whatever you can use to build websites can be used to build a WebRTC service.

What’s your language?

Back to you. What is the programming languages you use with WebRTC?

If you are looking for developers, then what would be the languages you’d view as mandatory and which ones as preferable with applicants?

–

This as well as other topics are covered in my upcoming Advanced WebRTC Architecture course. Be sure to enroll if you wish to deepen your understanding in this topic.

The post What’s Your Preferred Language for WebRTC Development? appeared first on BlogGeek.me.

So far so good, but it is time to add some more options for you.

A selection of three different course packages

I am working to complete all lessons for the course. It takes time to work things through, go over the lessons, make sure everything is in order and record the sessions.

The interesting thing to me is the variety of people that enroll to this course – they come from all over the globe, varying from small startups to large companies. I found some interesting vendors who are looking at WebRTC that I wasn’t aware of.

A few updates about the course

There are a few minor updates that are taking place in the course:

• I will most probably add a forum to go along with the course. The forum is opened for all packages, and it will be a place where discussions and questions can take place between the students
• The FAQ page was updated, based on questions I received in the past several weeks – check it out
• The enrollment page now shows a pricing table, in an effort to make things clearer
• There are now 3 packages:
  1. Basic – access to the course for 2 months + forum
  2. Plus – access to the course for 4 months + forum + office hours
  3. Premium – a new package – see below for information
• For those who wish to enroll by wire transfer instead of PayPal – just contact me through my contact form

Course length

The course duration is 8 weeks, give or take a few days.

That said, if you want access to the recorded materials for a longer period, then you might want to consider going for the Plus or Premium packages.

The Plus package extends access to the course materials, including the forum and the office hours by an additional 2 months.

Office hours happen twice a week, at two different times to accommodate multiple time zones. During office hours I will be reviewing with the students their learning and understanding of WebRTC and assist in person in areas that will arise. I might even decide to hold a quick online lesson on relevant or timely topics during the office hours.

The Premium package extends access to the curse materials up to a full year. More about the premium package below.

Groups

If you want to enroll multiple employees or just come join as a team, they just contact me directly.

For large enough groups, I can offer discounts. For others, just the service of proforma invoice and wire transfer (which can still be better than PayPal for you).

We will be having 3-4 medium sized groups in our course this time, which will make things interesting – especially during office hours.

The Premium Package

I decided to add a premium package to the offering.

The idea behind it is to allow those who want more access to my time, and in a more private way.

The premium package offers two substantial additions on top of the Plus package:

1. Access to course materials for a full year (instead of 2 or 4 months)
2. Two private consultation calls with me

In the past few months I’ve noticed a lot of small companies who end up wanting an advice. A few hours of my time to explain to me what they are doing and chat about it, to see if there’s anything I can suggest. I decided to offer this service through this course as well, by bundling it as two consultation calls that go on top of the course itself.

We select together the agenda of these calls and what you want to achieve in them before we start. We then schedule the time and medium to use for the call (think something with WebRTC and a webcam, but not necessarily). And then we sit and chat.

If you already enrolled

If you already enrolled via PayPal and haven’t heard anything from me other than an order form and an invoice – don’t worry. I will be reaching out to all students a week or two before the course.

I am excited to do this, and really hope you are too.

 

See you next month!

 

Learn how to design the best architecture for our WebRTC service in this new Advanced WebRTC Architecture course.

 

The post Advanced WebRTC Architecture Course: Adding a Premium Package appeared first on BlogGeek.me.

This week mod_conference and mod_verto saw the most action with added sounds and user variables, whitelisting, and syncing outbound calls with the user directory respectively. The FreeSWITCH configuration audit is ongoing with initial minor commits and will continue throughout the year. If you are looking to volunteer to help with that or would like more information email [email protected] or join the Bug Hunt on Tuesdays at 12:00pm Central Time.

Join us Wednesdays at 12:00 CT for some more FreeSWITCH fun! And, head over to freeswitch.com to learn more about FreeSWITCH support.

New features that were added:

• FS-9533 [mod_conference] Add member-enter-sound
• FS-9526 [mod_conference] Add deaf sounds
• FS-9543 [core] Add pre-exec state change hooks to core
• FS-9549 [mod_verto] Add userVariables to DMTF and INFO messages
• FS-9524 [mod_verto] Enable whitelisting of Verto connections by IP using FS ACL
• FS-9550 [mod_verto] Set user on outbound verto calls to sync with user directory
• FS-9551 [switch_ivr – json cdr] Adding app-stamp to app_log

Improvements in build system, cross-platform support, and packaging:

• FS-9527 [mod_avmd] Fix MAP_POPULATE on FreeBSD

The following bugs were squashed:

• FS-9538 [core] Fixed a segfault while reading local ringback file
• FS-9548 [core] Return with an error on wrong RTP IP given from configuration
• FS-9536 [core] Fixed the return value
• FS-9552 [mod_conference] Added ‘deaf’ to the json status per member
• FS-9435 [mod_av] Fixed an issue with receiving PLI requests once per second
• FS-9525 [mod_av] Fixed an issue with client initiated RE-INVITE with a different audio codec calling into conference causing choppy audio
• FS-9557 [rtp] Eating AV in proxy media mode causing a few seconds of black screen
• FS-9498 [mod_conference] Fixed a regression with 100% cpu

A new module has been imported recently into the Kamailio git repository, named rabbitmq — its docs are available at:

• https://www.kamailio.org/docs/modules/devel/modules/rabbitmq.html

The module is a result of a joint development between Carsten Bock and Stefan Mititelu. If offers AMQP communication from kamailio.cfg using librabbitmq, allowing to interact using a well establish message queuing mechanism with external applications.Enjoy!

The FreeSWITCH 1.6.11 release is here!

This is also a routine maintenance release. Change Log and source tarball information below.

Release files are located here:

• Tarball: http://files.freeswitch.org/releases/freeswitch/freeswitch-1.6.11.tar.gz
• Packaging: https://freeswitch.org/confluence/display/FREESWITCH/Installation

New features that were added:

• FS-9138 [mod_avmd] Add config to vanilla folder
• FS-9480 [mod_kazoo] Add api enhancements
• FS-9457 [mod_http_cache] Allow GET and PUT from Azure Blob Service
• FS-9551 [switch_ivr – json cdr] Adding app-stamp to app_log
• FS-9487 [core] Add CBR param to video file recording params
• FS-9543 [core] Add pre-exec state change hooks to core
• FS-9472 [core] Add originate_retry_timeout, a maximum duration in seconds to allow retry
  attempts to occur, and originate_retry_min_period_ms, a minimum spacing between retry attempts
• FS-9495 [mod_conference] Add conference_join_energy_level variable
• FS-9533 [mod_conference] Add member-enter-sound
• FS-9526 [mod_conference] Add deaf sounds
• FS-9474 [mod_conference] Add variables to set initial volume on mod_conference
• FS-9498 [mod_conference] Fixed a regression with 100% cpu
• FS-9549 [mod_verto] Add userVariables to DMTF and INFO messages
• FS-9524 [mod_verto] Enable whitelisting of Verto connections by IP using FS ACL
• FS-9550 [mod_verto] Set user on outbound verto calls to sync with user directory
• FS-9242 [mod_verto] Convert to adapter.js
• FS-8955 [verto_communicator] Adding DTMF shortcuts and handling DTMF history on DTMF widget
• FS-9469 [verto.js] Added onGrant/onDenied callbacks in onStream/onError of RTCCallbacks so that the client code gets notified of a webrtc permission change immediately
• FS-8644 [mod_opus] OPUS_SET_BITRATE(), codec control and estimators for packet loss and
  RTT (with Kalman filters) to detect a slow or congested link. Feature enabled with “adjust-bitrate” in opus.conf.xml – it’s a feedback loop with incoming RTCP.

Improvements in build system, cross platform support, and packaging:

• FS-9466 [build] Use system MD5 if available
• FS-8623 [build] Fixed sun studio build errors building libvpx
• FS-9553 [core] Refactor video-on-hold
• FS-9465 [ubuntu packages] Add xenial instrumentation to Debian/utils.sh script
• FS-9471 [verto_communicator] Updating In Call display after receiving display update mes\
  sage from mod_verto.
• FS-9475 [mod_verto] Video bandwidth not conveyed in SDP for verto
• FS-9551 [mod_sofia] Compare session before setting TFLAG_SKIP_EARLY
• FS-9488 [mod_http_cache] Fixed a compile error
• FS-9498 [mod_conference] Try to make video writing thread more efficient
• FS-9527 [mod_avmd] Fix MAP_POPULATE on FreeBSD

The following bugs were squashed:

• FS-9538 [core] Fixed a segfault while reading local ringback file
• FS-9548 [core] Return with an error on wrong RTP IP given from configuration and fixed a crash on Invite due to bad configuration for sip profile
• FS-9536 [core] Fixed an issue with the return value
• FS-9580 [core] Add auto adjust for RTCP separate from RTP for sync NAT
• FS-9482 [core] Fixed a segfault on the second attempt to use uuid_media_3p
• FS-9484 [core] Fixed a variable type format spec
• FS-6954 [core] Use channel flags to check for proxy media or bypass media
• FS-9483 [mod_conference] Fixed a missing keyframe after re-invite
• FS-9493 [mod_conference] Fixed a possible crash when changing from normal to personal canvas on the fly
• FS-9494 [mod_conference] Fixed issues with video avatar switching when video starts/stops
• FS-9552 [mod_conference] Added ‘deaf’ to the json status per member
• FS-9435 [mod_av] Fixed an issue with receiving PLI requests once per second
• FS-9525 [mod_av] Fixed an issue with client initiated RE-INVITE with a different audio codec calling into conference causing choppy audio
• FS-9497 [mod_av] Fixed an AV sync record issue
• FS-9557 [rtp] Eating AV in proxy media mode causing a few seconds of black screen
• FS-9574 [mod_verto] We shouldn’t print data sent on the buffer because of the potential security issues
• FS-9475 [mod_verto] Video bandwidth not conveyed in SDP for verto
• FS-9471 [verto_communicator] Updating In Call display after receiving display update message from mod_verto.
• FS-9346 [verto_communicator] Add DTMF icon while on a video call, fixing conferences with pin number
• FS-9508 [verto_communicator] Adding AGC option on settings, enabled by default
• FS-7876 [verto_communicator] Adding hold button for video calls
• FS-9242 [verto.js] Fixed screen share for chrome to work in VC with additional camera
• FS-9586 [mod_local_stream] Fixed the local_stream video queue sticking when not being read from
• FS-9486 [mod_sofia] Fixed an issue with uuid_drop_dtmf switching between tone replace and digit
• FS-9458 [mod_avmd] Set channel variable before BEEP event is fired

Recording WebRTC? Definitely server side. But maybe client side.

This article is again taken partially from one of the lessons in my upcoming WebRTC Architecture Course. There, it is given in greater detail, and i recorded.

Learn how to design the best architecture for our WebRTC service in this new Advanced WebRTC Architecture course.

 

Recording is obviously not part of what WebRTC does. WebRTC offers the means to send media, but little more (which is just as it should be). If you want to record, you’ll need to take matters into your own hands.

Generally speaking, there are 3 different mechanisms that can be used to record:

1. Server side recording
2. Client side recording
3. Media forwarding

Let’s review them all and see where that leads us.

#1 – Server side recording

This is the technique I usually suggest developers to use. Somehow, it fits best in most cases (though not always).

What we do in server-side recording is route our media via a media server instead of directly between the browsrs. This isn’t TURN relay – a TURN relay doesn’t get to “see” what’s inside the packets as they are encrypted end-to-end. What we do is terminate the WebRTC session at the server on both sides of the call – route the media via the server and at the same time send the decoded media to post processing and recording.

What do I mean by post processing?

• We might want to mix the inputs from all participants and combine it all to a single media file
• We might want to lower the filesize that we end up storing
• Change format (and maybe the codecs?), to prepare it for playback in other types of devices and mediums

There are many things that factor in to a recording decision besides just saying “I want to record WebRTC”.

If I had to put pros vs cons for server side media recording in WebRTC, I’d probably get to this kind of a table:

+–No change in client-side requirementsAnother server in the infrastructureNo assumptions on client-side capabilities or behaviorLots of bandwidth (and processing)Can fit resulting recording to whatever medium and quality level necessaryNow we must route media#2- Client side recording

In many cases, developers will shy away from server-side recording, trying to solve the world’s problem on the client-side. I guess it is partially because many WebRTC developers tend to be Java Script coders and not full stack developers who know how to run complex backends. After all, putting up a media server comes with its own set of headaches and costs.

So the basics of client-side recording leans towards the following basic flow:

We first record stuff locally – WebRTC allows that.

And then we upload what we recorded to the server. Here’ we don’t really use WebRTC – just pure file upload.

Great on paper, somewhat less in reality. Why? There are a few interesting challenges when you record locally on machine you don’t know or control, via a browser:

• Do you even know how much available storage do you have to use for the recording? Will it be enough for that full hour session you planned to do for your e-learning service?
• And now that the session is done and you’re uploading a Gb of a file. Is the user just going to sit there and wait without closing his browser or the tab that is uploading the recording?
• Where and what do you record? If both sides record, then how do you synchronize the recordings?

It all leads to the fact that at the end of the day, client side recording isn’t something you can use. Unless the recording is short (a few minutes) or you have complete control over the browser environment (and even then I would probably not recommend it).

There are things you can do to mitigate some of these issues too. Like upload fragments of the recording every few seconds or minutes throughout the session, or even do it in parallel to the session continuously. But somehow, they tend not to work that well and are quite sensitive.

Want the pros and cons of client side recording? Here you go:

+–No need to add a media server to the media flowClient side logic is complex and quite dependent on the use caseRequires more on the uplink of the user – or more wait time at the end of the sessionNeed to know client’s device and behavior in advance#3 – Media forwarding

This is a lesser known technique – or at least something I haven’re really seen in the wild. It is here, because the alternative is possible to use.

The idea behind this one is that you don’t get to record locally, but you don’t get to route media via a server either.

What is done here, is that media is forwarded by one or both of participants to a recording server.

The latest releases of Chrome allows to forward incoming peer connection media, making this possible.

This is what I can say further about this specific alternative:

+–No need to add a media server into the flow – just as an additional external recording serverRequires twice the uplink or moreDo you want to be the first to try this technique?Things to remember

Recording doesn’t end with how you record media.

There’s meta data to treat (record, playback, sync, etc).

And then there’s the playback part – where, how, when, etc.

There are also security issues to deal with and think about – both on the recording end and on the playback side.

These are covered in a bit more detail in the course.

What’s next?

If you are going to record, start by leaning towards server side recording.

Sit down and list all of your requirements for recording, archiving and playback – they are interconnected. Then start finding the solution that will fit your needs.

And if you feel that you still have gaps there, then why not enroll to the Advanced WebRTC Architecture course?

 

Learn how to design the best architecture for our WebRTC service in this new Advanced WebRTC Architecture course.

The post Recording WebRTC Sessions: client side or server side? appeared first on BlogGeek.me.

Analytics != Operation

Twilio just announced a new service to its growing cadre of services. This time – Voice Insights.

What to expect in the coming days

This week Twilio announced several interesting initiatives:

1. Country specific guidelines on using SMS
2. A new Voice Insights service
3. The Kurento acquisition

Add to that their recent announcement on their new Enterprise offering and the way they seem to be adding more number choices in countries. What we get is too much work to cover a single vendor in this industry.

Twilio is enhancing its services in breadth and depth at the same time, doing so while trying to reach out to new customer types. I will be covering all of these issues soon enough. Some of it here, some on other blogs where I write. Customers with an active subscription for my WebRTC PaaS report will receive a longform written analysis separately covering all these aspects later this month.

What I want to cover in this article

I already wrote about Twilio’s Kurento acquisition. This time, I want to focus on Voice Insights.

All the media outlets I’ve checked to read about Voice Insights were regurgitating the Twilio announcement with little to add. At most, they had callstats.io to refer to. I think a lot is missing from the current conversation. So lets dig in.

What is Voice Insights?

Voice Insights is a set of tools that can be used to understand what’s going on under the rug. When you use a communications API platform – or build your own for that matter – the first thing to notice is that there’s lack of understanding of what’s really happening.

Most dashboards focus on giving you the basics – what sessions you created, how long were they, how much money you owe us. Others add some indication of quality metrics.

The tools under the Voice Insights title at Twilio include:

1. Collection of all network stats, so you can check them out in the Twilio console
2. Real time triggers on the client, telling you when network issues arise or the volume is too low/high
3. Pre-call network test on the client
4. User feedback collection (the Skype “how was your call quality” nag)

Some of them were already available in some form or another in the Twilio offering – such as user feedback collection.

The features here can be split into two types:

1. Client side – the real time triggers, pre-call network test
2. Server side – collection of network stats

Twilio gave a good introduction to all of thee capabilities, so I won’t be repeating them here.

What is interesting, is if and how they have decided to implement the real time triggers – do they get triggered from the backend or directly by running rules on the device. But I digress here.

How is it priced?

Interestingly, Voice Insights is priced separately from the calling service itself.

If you want insights into the voice minutes you use on Twilio, there’s an extra charge associated with it.

Prices start from $0.004 per minute, going down to ~$0.002 per minute for those who can commit to 1 million voice minutes a month. It goes down to a shy above $0.001 a minute.

For comparison, SIP-to-SIP voice calling on Twilio starts at $0.005 per minute, making Voice Insights a rather expensive service.

Comparisons with callstats.io are necessary at this point. If you take a low tier of 10,000 voice minutes a month, callstats.io is priced at 19 EUR (based on their calculator – it can get higher or lower based on “data points”) whereas Twilio Voice Insights stands at 40 USD. How do these two vendors offer lower rates at bulk is an exercise I’ll leave for others to make.

Is this high? low? market price? I have no clue.

TokBox, on the other hand, has their own tool called Inspector and another feature called Pre-Call Test. And it is given for free as part of the service.

Where is it headed?

Voice Insights can take several directions with Twilio:

• Extend it to support video sessions as well
• Enhance and deepen the analytics capabilities, probably once enought  feedback is received from customers on this feature
• Switch from a paid to free offering, again, based on customer feedback
• Unbundle it from Twilio and offer it as a stand-alone service to others – maybe to all the vendors that are using Kurento on premise?

With analytics, the sky usually isn’t the limit. It is just the beginning of the dreams and stories you can build upon a large data set. The problem is how can you take these dreams and make them come true.

Which brings us to the next issue.

The future of Analytics in Comm APIs

There’s a line drawn in the sand here. Between communications and analytics.

Analytics has a perceived value of its own – on top of enabling the interaction itself.

Will this hold water? Will other communication API vendors add such capabilities? Will they be charging extra for them?

I’ve had my share of stories around CEM (Customer Experience Management). Network equipment vendors and those handling video streaming are marketing it to their customers. Analytics on network data. This isn’t much different.

Time will tell if this is something that will become common place and desired, or just a failed attempt. I still don’t have an opinion where this will go.

Up next

Next in my quick series of articles on Twilio comes coverage of their new Enterprise plan, and how Twilio is trying to grow in breadth and depth at the same time.

 

Test and Monitor your WebRTC Service like a pro - check out how testRTC can improve your service' stability and performance.

The post Twilio’s Voice Insights for WebRTC – a line on the sand appeared first on BlogGeek.me.

If you haven’t yet enrolled to my Advanced WebRTC Architecture course – then why wait?

I just noticed that I haven’t written any specific post here about the upcoming course, so consider this one that announcement. To my defense – I sent it out a few days ago to the monthly newsletter I have.

Why a course on WebRTC architecture?

I’ve been working with entrepreneurs, developers, product managers and people in general about their WebRTC products for quite some time. But somehow I missed to notice that in many such discussions there were large gaps in what people thought about WebRTC and what WebRTC really is.

There’s lots of beginner’s information out there for WebRTC, but somehow it always focuses on how to use the WebRTC APIs in the browser, or what the meaning of a specific feature in the standard is. There is also a large set of walk-throughs of different frameworks that you can use, but no one seems to offer a path for a developer to decide on his architecture. To answer the question of “what should I be choosing for my service?”

So I set out to put a course that answers that specific question. It gives the basics of what WebRTC is, and then dives into the part of what it means to put an architecture in place:

• How to analyze the real requirements of your scenarios?
• What are the various components you will need?
• Go through common design patterns that crop up in popular service archetypes

What’s in the course?

The easiest way is to go through the course syllabus. It is available online here and also in PDF form.

When will the course take place?

The course is all conducted online, but not live.

It starts on October 24, and I am now in final preparation of recording the materials after creating them in the past two months.

The course is designed to be:

• Built out of 7 modules
• Have 40 lessons give or take, each on average should take you 30 minutes
• This means if you take a lesson on every working day, you should complete this in 2 months
• You can do it at a faster pace if you wish
• Course materials are available online for students for a period of 2 months. This can be extended to 4 months for those who wish to add Office Hours on top of the course

Any discount for friends and family?

Enrolling to the course is $247 USD. Adding Office Hours on top of it means an additional $150 USD.

Until tomorrow, there’s a $50 USD discount – so enroll now if you’re already certain you want to.

There are discounts for those who want to enroll as a larger group – contact me for that.

Have more questions?

Check the FAQ. I’ll be updating it as more questions come it.

If you can’t find what you need there – just contact me.

The post Discount on the Advanced WebRTC Architecture Course ends tomorrow appeared first on BlogGeek.me.

Open source media frameworks in WebRTC are all the rage these days.

Jitsi got acquired by Atlassian early last year and now Twilio grabs Kurento.

What to expect in the coming days

Yesterday Twilio announced several interesting initiatives:

1. Country specific guidelines on using SMS
2. A new Voice Insights service
3. The Kurento acquisition

Add to that their recent announcement on their new Enterprise offering and the way they seem to be adding more number choices in countries. What we get is too much work to cover a single vendor in this industry.

Twilio is enhancing its services in breadth and depth at the same time, doing so while trying to reach out to new customer types. I will be covering all of these issues soon enough. Some of it here, some on other blogs where I write. Customers with an active subscription for my WebRTC PaaS report will receive a longform written analysis separately covering all these aspects later this month.

What I want to cover in this article

What I want to cover in this part of my analysis of the recent Twilio announcements is their acquisition of Kurento.

Things I’ll be touching is Why Kurento – how will it further Twilio’s goal – and also what will happen to the many users of Kurento.

I’ll also touch the open source media server space, and the fact that the next runner up in the acquisition roulette of our industry should be Janus.

But first things first.

What is Kurento?

Kurento is an open source WebRTC server-side media framework implemented on top of GStreamer. While it may not be limited to WebRTC, my guess is that most if not all of its users make use of WebRTC with it.

What does that mean exactly?

• Open source – anyone can download and use Kurento. And many do
  • There’s a vibrant community around it of developers that use it independently, Outsourcing development shops that use it in their projects to customers and the Kurento team itself offering free and paid support to it
  • It is distributed under the Apache license which is quite lenient and enterprise-friendly
• server-side media framework – when you want to process media in WebRTC for recording, multiparty or other processes, a server-side media framework is necessary
• GStreamer – another popular open source project for media processing. Just another tidbit you may want to remember

I am seeing Kurento everywhere I go. Every couple of meetings I have with companies, they indicate that they make use of Kurento or when you look at their service it is apparent it uses Kurento. Somehow, it has become one of these universal packages that developers turn to when they need stuff done.

The Kurento team is running multiple activities/businesses (I might be doing a few mistakes here – it is always hard to follow such internal structures):

1. Kurento, the open source project itself
   • Assisted by research done at theUniversidad Rey Juan Carlos located in Madrid, Spain
   • Funding raised through the European Commission
   • Money received by selling support and customization services
2. NUBOMEDIA
   • A new initiative focused on scaling and an open source PaaS offering on top of Kurento
   • You can read more about it in a guest post by Luis Lopez (the face of Kurento)
3. elasticRTC
   • Another new initiative, but a commercial one
   • Focused at getting scalable Kurento running on AWS
4. Naevatec / Tikal Technologies SL
   • The business side of the Kurento project, where customization and support is done for a price

Kurento have a busy team…

What did Twilio acquire exactly?

This is where things get complicated. From my understanding, reading the materials online and through a briefing held with Twilio, this is what you can expect:

• Kurento as an open source project is left open source, untouched and un-acquired. That said, the bulk of the team maintaining Kurento (the Naevatec developers) will be moving to be Twilio employees
• Naevtec was not acquired and will live on. A new team will need to be hired and trained. During the transition period, the Twilio team will work on the Kurento project fulfilling any existing obligations. After that, Naevatec will supposedly have the internal manpower to take charge of that part of the business
• elasticRTC was acquired. They will not be onboarding any new customers, but will continue supporting existing customers
  • This sounds like the story of AddLive and Snapchat (they waited for support contracts to expire and worked diligently but legally to get customers off the AddLive service)
  • That said, it seems like Twilio wants to leverage these early adopters of elasticRTC to design and build their own Twilio API offering around that domain (more on that later)
  • As I don’t believe there are many customers to elasticRTC, I don’t see this as a real blow to anyone
• NUBOMEDIA was not mentioned in any of the announcements of the acquisition
  • I forgot to prod about it in my briefing…
  • Twilio are probably unhappy about this one, but had nothing to do about it
  • NUBOMEDIA is funded by multiple European projects, so was either impossible to acquire or too expensive for what Twilio had an appetite for
  • It might also had more partners to it than just the Kurento team(s)
  • How will the acquisition affect NUBOMEDIA’s project and the zeal with which Twilio’s new employees from Naevatec will have for it is an open question

To sum things up:

Twilio acqui-hired the team behind the Kurento project and took their elasticRTC offering out of the market before it became too popular.

How will Twilio use Kurento?

I’d like to split this one to short term and long term

Short term – multiparty calling

Twilio needed an SFU. Desperately.

In April 2015 the Twilio Video initiative was announced. Almost 18 months later and that service is still in beta. It is also still 1:1 calling or mesh for multiparty.

Something had to be done. While I am sure Twilio has been working for quite some time on a solid multiparty option, they probably had a few roadblocks, which got them to start using Kurento – or decide they need to buy that technology instead of build it internally.

Which got them to the point of the acquisition. Twilio will probably embed Kurento into their Twilio Video offer, adding three new capabilities to their platform with it:

1. Multiparty calling, in an SFU model, and maybe an MCU one
2. Video recording capability – a popular Kurento use case
3. PSTN connectivity for video calling – Kurento has a SIP-Gateway component that can be used for that purpose

Long term – generic media server

In the long term, Twilio can employ the full power of Kurento and offer it in the cloud with a flexible API that pipelines media in real time.

This can be used in our new brave world of AI, Bots, IOT and AR – all them acronyms people love talking about.

It will be interesting to see how Twilio ends up implementing it and what kind of an API and an offering they will put in place, as there are many challenges here:

• How do you do something so generic but still maintain low resource consumption?
• How do you price it in an attractive way?
• How do you decide which use cases to cover and which to ignore?
• How do you design it for scale, especially if you are as big as Twilio?
• How do you design simple yet flexible and powerful API for something so generic in nature?

This is one of the most interesting projects in our industry at the moment, and if Twilio is working towards that goal, then I envy their product managers and developers.

What will be left of the Kurento project?

That’s the big unknown. Luis Lopez, project lead of Kurento details the official stance of Kurento and Twilio on the Kurento blog. It is an expected positive looking write up, but it leaves the hard questions unanswered.

Maintaining the Kurento project

Twilio is known for their openness and the way they work with developers. While that is true, the Twilio github has little in the way of projects that aren’t samples written on top of the Twilio platform or open sourced projects that touch the core of Twilio. While that is understandable and expected, the question is how will Twilio treat the Kurento open source project?

Now that most of the workforce that is leading Kurento are becoming Twilio employees, will they work on the open source Kurento build or on internal needs and builds of Twilio? Here are a few hard questions that have no real answers to them:

• What will be contributed back to the Kurento project besides stability and bug fixes?
• If Twilio work on optimizing Kurento to higher capacities or add horizontal scalability modules to Kurento. Will that be open sourced or left inside Twilio?
• How will Twilio prioritize bugs and requests coming from the large Kurento community versus handling their own internal roadmap?

While in many cases, with Kurento the answer would have been that Naevatec could just as well limit the access to higher level modules for paid customers – there was someone you could talk to when you wanted to purchase such modules. Now with Twilio, that route is over. Twilio are not in the business of paid support and customization of open source projects – they are in the business of cloud APIs.

There will be ongoing friction inside Twilio with the decision between investing in the open source Kurento platform versus using it internally. If you thought that was bad with Atlassian acquiring Jitsi – it is doubly so here, where Twilio may have to compete with a build vs buy decisions of companies where “build” is done on top of Kurento.

I assume Twilio doesn’t have the answers to these questions yet either.

Maintaining the business model

Kurento has customers. Not only users and developers.

These customers pay Naevatec. They pay for support hours or for customization work.

Will this be allowed moving forward?

Can the yet-to-be-hired new team at Naevatec handle the support?

What happens when someone wants to pay a large sum of money to Naevatec in order to deploy a scalable Kurento service in the cloud? Will Naevatec pick that project? If said customer also wants to build an API platform on top of it, will that be something Naeva Tec will still do?

What will others who see themselves as Twilio competitors do if they made use of Kurento up until now? Especially if they were a Naevatec paying customer…

The good thing is, that many of the Kurento users ended up getting paid support and customization by third party vendors. Now if you only could know which one of them does a decent job…

Should TokBox be worried?

Yes and no.

Yes, because it means Twilio will be getting their multiparty story, and by that competing with TokBox. Twilio has a wider set of features as well, making them more attractive in some cases.

No, because there’s room for more players, and for video calling services at the moment, TokBox is the go-to vendor. I wonder if they can maintain their lead.

What about Janus?

I recently compared Jitsi to Kurento.

Little did I know then that Twilio decided on Kurento and was in the process of acquiring it.

I also raised the question about Janus.

To some extent, Janus is next-in-line:

• Those I know who use the project are happy with it and its architecture. A lot more than other smaller open source media framework projects
• Slack has been using Janus for awhile now
• Other vendors, some got acquired recently, also make use of it

Does Meetecho, the company behind Janus, willing to sell it isn’t important. It is a matter of price points.

We’ve seen the larger vendors veer towards acquiring the technology that they are using.

Will Slack go after Janus? Maybe Vonage/Nexmo? Oracle, to beef their own WebRTC offering?

–

Open source media frameworks have proven to be extremely effective in churning out commercial services on top of them. WebRTC made that happen by being its own open source initiative.

It is good to see Kurento finding a new home and growing up. Kudos to the Kurento team.

 

Learn how to design the best architecture for our WebRTC service in this new Advanced WebRTC Architecture course.

 

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