Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) play a crucial role in this digital-first age, enabling seamless communication and integration between various software systems. Staying on top of the latest API trends is vital for businesses and developers to exploit new opportunities and deliver innovative solutions with fast time-to-market.
Empowering businesses with cutting-edge technology, Web Real-Time Communication (RTC) revolutionises customer engagement, enabling seamless and immersive real-time interactions. It offers various use cases, from simple web applications utilising camera or microphone capabilities to more sophisticated applications like video calling and screen sharing.
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This article explores the latest WebRTC trends and predictions for 2024.
It’s better to clear up what WebRTC is not. It is not a protocol! It is not a product. It is not an out-of-the-box solution.
WebRTC is a project.
Specifically, it’s a project or technology owned by Google that acts as a compatibility layer between clients (usually web browsers, but potentially discrete applications) so that the clients can communicate in real-time with one another.
You may, when working with coders, you may hear WebRTC referred to as a library. This is practically correct, but also kind of a misconception. A libwebrtc library contains a set of tools for implementing WebRTC that is officially released, but the library is not the project.
WebRTC technology enables real-time communication between web browsers or compatible applications without the need for additional plugins or software installations. It is open source and allows users to engage in various forms of communication, such as audio and video calls, live chat, and file sharing, directly from their web browsers. Visit our blog to explore WebRTC security best practices and considerations.
Following are a few use cases of WebRTC.
Clients such as web browsers can talk to web servers easily. That’s what they’re initially built to do. They visit web pages, take HTML CSS and maybe JavaScript from a server somewhere, and assemble that code into a web page that regular humans can look at with their eyeballs and interact with.
This is all that web browsers were all the way back to the advent of Netscape… Up until about 2009, when the internet really began to expand to include fundamentally different interactions than computers talking to web servers.
What if a client wants to talk to another client?
This is called peer-to-peer– and it’s also been around for ages. Many online chat programs were DCC (Direct Client to Client), and CTCP (Client to Client Protocol). BitTorrent is also peer-to-peer. Many early online game clients were strictly peer-to-peer, where clients would connect to other clients via IP addresses.
The problem with peer-to-peer applications was configuration. This was addressed by using discrete, pre-configured applications that handled these configuration problems. There was no widely adopted general way of establishing peer-to-peer connections for generic use around the web– and this is the problem that webRTC addressed.
Let’s say we have two clients that want to establish a peer-to-peer connection. Well. First off… How do they know about each other? How do they discover each other on the internet?
This problem of clients discovering one another is called signalling. As in, they are signalling to each other “Hey. I’m right here, and I am looking for a connection!” WebRTC itself does not handle any provisions for signalling; it hands that responsibility off to an application server. So both clients connect to a known server, and the server tells them what other clients are available to connect to.
When two clients want to connect, the signalling server acts as a middle-man. Both clients have to exchange configuration data in order to accept a peer-to-peer connection with one another. The technical term for this data is a Session Description Protocol (SDP) token. It basically tells the other connection things like window size, where to address peripherals like microphones, earphones, webcams, and other generic resources like video drivers or available video codecs that one client may have.
After the signalling server facilitates both clients exchanging their SDP tokens, it’s time for the clients to connect. The clients use ICE to implement a data stream to one another, but there are two main ways that the actual connection gets made between the clients. Either by STUN or by TURN. You can think of ICE as a cable, and STUN, or TURN as the plugs that are on either end of that cable.
STUN servers are part of the clients themselves, which list their public network addresses for the other clients to connect to. Sometimes, firewalls and other network settings prevent these types of connections from being used directly. For that, there is the TURN type connection, which a trusted public server is connected to that essentially bypasses the two clients from having to address or ‘plug into each other directly.
WebRTC connections go through the following operations to work:
If this sounds confusing; it’s because there is a lot of complexity that WebRTC has to handle in order to act as an effective compatibility layer across countless device types and configurations in hardware, software, and networking!
It depends. There are pros and cons to WebRTC. Here are some to consider:
|
Pros |
Cons |
|
Widely used by many apps |
Controlled by a single company (Google) |
|
Generally mature technology |
Can be complicated to develop with |
|
Stable and supported |
CPaaS may be better |
|
Contributed to and supported by Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc. |
Passed its peak in adoption |
Certainly, many generic peer-to-peer web applications choose WebRTC as their toolset to develop with– and this will continue to be the case well into the future. But, there are two major reasons for the unquestionable dominance of WebRTC to wane a little into the future.
Mainly, the fact that it has peaked in adoption– meaning that next year and going into the foreseeable future there will be fewer applications made using WebRTC than there were before at its peak… And secondly, the advent of Communications Platforms as a Service (CPAAS).
According to the Technavio WebRTC Market Analysis Report, the WebRTC market size is projected to grow at a CAGR of 48.89% between 2022-2027, increasing by $66,579.72 million. This growth depends on various factors discussed below.
Let's explore the key drivers of WebRTC growth, market trends, and the current customer landscape.
The increasing demand for frictionless video and audio conferencing experiences is a key driver behind the growth of the web real-time communication (WebRTC) market. Other key market drivers include the following:
The integration of AI in WebRTC and the rapid increase in the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) practice are the key market trends for WebRTC.
BYOD encourages employees to use their personal devices in the workplace, with over one-third of employers worldwide providing devices and more than half promoting BYOD.
Moreover, the growth of the WebRTC market is fueled by the convergence of WebRTC and Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, providing significant opportunities in the coming years.
The WebRTC customer landscape is diverse, encompassing various industries and sectors. WebRTC technology has gained traction among businesses prioritising real-time communication and customer collaboration.
The demand for improved communication solutions in mission-critical sectors like banking, financial services, and healthcare drives the WebRTC market growth. As technology empowers various sectors with real-time communication and data handling needs, integrating efficient web scraping techniques becomes paramount. By leveraging web scraping proxy providers, businesses can automate data extraction processes efficiently, ensuring seamless access to vital web-based information while maintaining anonymity and overcoming common data acquisition barriers. This enhancement is pivotal for sectors driven by timely and accurate data analytics.
The following trends and predictions highlight the ongoing evolution of WebRTC as it continues to shape the landscape of real-time communication in 2024.
Let's explore them below.
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