Peer to Peer Communication using Web Sockets and Web RTC
Vineet Sharma, Mridul Kumar Pandey, Jayant Gupta, Hem Kishan · 2024
In the rapidly expanding information era, the Internet has become an indispensable part of peoples' lives, and in this rapidly globalizing world, communication amongst people is paramount. Users can now access websites and other online resources because of the HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) request-response protocol, which is used to transfer data over the internet. However, one of its disadvantages is that clients cannot access servers' real-time data. Therefore, real-time communication is not possible with technologies like HTTP streaming, long polling, and polling. As a result, WebRTC, or Web Real-Time Communication, and the Web Socket Protocol were used. The latter enables browser-to-browser sharing of media and data in real time. With the help of this peer-to-peer technology, web browsers can now communicate in real time. Almost all contemporary browsers have this technology, which allows them to talk to each other rather than just web servers. Thus, this paper covers the importance of communicating in real-time, the limitations of traditional web real-time communication, an overview of web sockets, and the differences between HTTP and Web Socket Protocol. The paper then explains the significance of audio and video conferencing in the modern world and provides an overview of Web Real-Time Communication (WebRTC), including its architecture and the use of a web-RTC-based system.