miksme/p2pchat

A WebRTC utilizing webapp

P2PChat

P2PChat is a WebRTC utilizing webapp that is able to form mesh-like and SFU-like connections with other clients to transfer data between them.

Features

• Rooms
• Messaging
• Creation of video/voice calls
• Screensharing
• Transfer of files

How to use it?

1. Download both P2PChat and P2PChat-server projects
2. Copy default_config.ts to config.ts and change it to your liking
3. Pray to God that your network is not NATed or get a working TURN server
4. Download all the required modules (with yarn install unless you enjoy a dependency hell)
5. Build P2PChat ( npm run build/yarn build/etc. )
6. Build P2PChat-server ( npm run build/yarn build/etc. )
7. Copy P2PChat/build/* to P2PChat-server/build/app/views
8. Run P2PChat-server ( npm start/yarn start/etc. )
9. Open whatever hostname and port was set in browser

How does it work?

Data communication is done over WebRTC (with simple peer) and the webserver is used to keep a record of active rooms aswell as to signal events (with socket.io) like a user joining or leaving.
Said signaling is also used to establish WebRTC connections between users by using the server to passthrough signal messages

What room type to use?

When creating a room a choice will be given - Mesh type of SFU type

Mesh:

• Every single client is connected to every other client
• If the creator of the room leaves everyone else can still communicate
• Sometimes more reliable
• Connected users use more resources on average than they would on SFU
• Will face problems if too many clients connect

SFU server:

• Every client is connected to the creator of the room
• If the creator of the room leaves everyone else cannot communicate - the room becomes "dead"
• More resource easy on the connected clients
• The creator of the room will need to provide all streams and process them and so will face the highest load.
• Allows for more users than a Mesh-type would

After the room is established other users will be able to connect to it.

Problems with connection

If no STUN server is provided the connection will not be established since that is how WebRTC works*

However if no TURN server is provided some clients will still be able to connect to one another. If one cannot it is most likely due to firewall settings/ being in a NATed network.

To fix this issue NAT traversal can be used (and this requires a TURN server)

Are there any unit tests?

No

What about usable documentation?

No

And can a browser tab really be made to be a SFU server?

Probably...

Does this project use "SFU" correctly?

Nope
The SFUServer class does not implement a lot of things to follow the definition of an "SFU server" (to my knowledge) but I think that it is close enough and im not renaming all instances of SFU to something else