Re: Reference Protocol and Implementation

On Sun, Nov 13, 2011 at 11:53 AM, Ramesh Nethi <ramesh.nethi@gmail.com>wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I have been following the activity on WebRTC last few months and excited
> to see the progress on the spec development.
>
> Wearing the hat of a web application developer, I have a question:
>
> As a web app developer,
>
> - I am not an expert on signalling and media protocols
> - As a result, I cannot devise robust and secure protocols for the same.
> - However, I understand the web application development part of it
> (HTML5/JavaScript/Ajax/WebSockets, Python/PHP/Java/Node.js/Ruby etc)
> - I am excited at the possibility of a cross-browser, plugin-less  RTC
> capabilities and have bunch of ideas on how I can leverage these
> capabilities for a new application I am planning on developing
>
> - Going through some of the emails in this discussion forum and the API
> spec document, I get the impression that when browsers implement this
> standard, it is not enough for me to get started with application
> development. I still need the signalling protocol aspect to be taken care
> by myself.
>
> - I see two or three options:
>
> a) Hope that one of the vendors (Google, Facebook etc) implement an
> end-to-end solution and make it available as an open-source or commercial
> libraries for both front-end and back-end development
>

The WebRTC team at Google will provide an open source reference application
that you can use to get started here. While this application is not yet
available, neither are WebRTC-enabled browsers at the moment.

>
> b) Wait for some great people at Apache or similar open source communities
> to start a project on this.
>
> c) Understand what it takes to design & implement a signalling protocol
> (and any other details) and  get started my self.
>
> Clearly, (c) is ruled out given my web app development skillsets.  I
> cannot rely on options (a) and (b) for time constraints.
>
> So, what choice people like me have ?
>
> - I have gone through the draft draft-sipdoc-rtcweb-open-wire-protocol-00
> and  fully understand the rationale for not having a single recommended
> protocol.
>
> - But how about a reference protocol and reference implementation with an
> open license ?   Much like Java Community Process (JCP)'s reference
> implementation of APIs.
>
> - Could this be done under the ambit of this working group with
> participation from experts and interested folks ?  If not, one other
> approach is to kick start an open source project outside the working group
> ( Like Option (b) above).
>
> Would love to hear your feedback/insights ?
>
> thanks
> Ramesh Nethi
> Cisco India.
>
>