by rixthefox on 9/27/22, 1:36 PM
They really do want to be the center of everything it seems. I wish they would stop trying to be the Cisco of Networking in the sense of trying to convince a lot of people to let them handle critical network functions for a ton of networks.
All it will take is one major outage for everyone to see this is a bad idea.
Why trust a cloud provider who could go down and take half the Internet with it? Why centralize it that much where that is even possible?
by shiomiru on 9/27/22, 2:25 PM
I'm having trouble understanding how giving this metadata to a centralized entity makes the transaction more "private".
In the example, now instead of sharing my IP with a therapist, (who I presumably trust enough to... not ddos me?), I'm sharing the fact that I was talking to a therapist with a company I possibly didn't even know existed.
Better yet, I suppose I can now be barred from accessing webrtc services if said company decides I'm a "threat" based on all the metadata they've been collecting through their other services.
by Xeoncross on 9/27/22, 1:45 PM
> "With a traditional WebRTC implementation, both the patient and therapist’s devices would talk directly with each other, leading to exposure of potentially sensitive data such as the IP address... When using Calls, you are still using WebRTC, but the individual participants are connecting to the Cloudflare network. If four people are on a video call powered by Cloudflare Calls, each of the four participants' devices will be talking only with the Cloudflare network. To your end users, the experience will feel just like a peer-to-peer call, only with added security and privacy upside.
Can someone clarify this? WebRTC is encrypted generally even if you leak metadata like IP address. Is Cloudflare stating they will be the middleman and therefore have access to the decrypted video stream?
by mwcampbell on 9/27/22, 2:12 PM
Was hoping they'd release a stand-alone TURN service first. The WebRTC-based product I've been working on for months now (finally wrapping up v1) is one-to-one by nature, and I actually want the connection to be peer-to-peer when possible. But access to a TURN server in every Cloudflare datacenter would be nice.
by corytheboyd on 9/27/22, 1:33 PM
This sounds badass to be honest. Having written some WebRTC browser applications from scratch, that architecture turns into a complicated mess real fast, I can only imagine the nightmare that becomes at less than well equipped tech startups. This sounds like the right way to actually solve the problem.
by tommoor on 9/27/22, 1:35 PM
by throwaway99797 on 9/27/22, 1:58 PM
Google missed their opportunity to do this: they've had Google Meet / Hangouts / ... for years. They have the same backend infrastructure that can scale to thousands and low latency to everywhere. Meet already does this with a custom Google protocol in the browser.
If Google had just opened their APIs, they could have provided this to everyone...
by teddyh on 9/27/22, 1:32 PM
Another “Let’s make Cloudflare the central server of the Internet” service, from what I can see.
by deeblering4 on 9/27/22, 5:47 PM
> Remote 'fireside chats' where one or multiple people can have a video call with an audience of 10,000+ people in real time (<100ms delay)
I keep hearing this term 'fireside chat' used like this, and ever time there's no actual fire and it's not intimate (10k viewers?). What is it supposed to mean?
by endisneigh on 9/27/22, 1:47 PM
How much will this cost after the beta?
by lminiero on 9/27/22, 4:13 PM
As the main author of Janus, I didn't appreciate at all them proactively suggesting Calls as a replacement for existing deployments based on Janus and mediasoup. I'd understand them aggressively marketing against other RTC cloud providers like Agora, Twilio, and others: trying to "steal" users from open source projects (who share everything and so often live on consulting) really feels like a d*ck move, instead, and basically stealing candy from kids.
by rasz on 9/27/22, 2:50 PM
TLDR: Remember how Skype allowed you to talk directly with one another without pesky servers and middle men positioned to intercept calls and metadata? Remember CALEA (Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act to allow wiretapping on digital phone networks)? Remember how Microsoft scrambled to dismantle peer-to-peer infrastructure and switch Skype to a typical server model while simultaneously joining PRISM program? Wouldnt you want to do the same with WebRTC? Why trust your doctor when you can trust Us instead!
>"With a traditional WebRTC implementation, both the patient and therapist’s devices would talk directly with each other, leading to exposure of potentially sensitive data such as the IP address... When using Calls, you are still using WebRTC, but the individual participants are connecting to the Cloudflare network
by pwpwp on 9/27/22, 2:19 PM
Does this support RTC data channels, too, or just A/V?
by kwindla on 9/27/22, 3:48 PM
I'd love to know more about
> Calls uses anycast for every connection, so every packet is always routed to the closest Cloudflare location.
Is this true for the UDP media (and data channels) traffic, or just for the initial signaling and connection setup?
If the UDP traffic is all anycast, that's truly impressive engineering work. Bravo!
by gnfargbl on 9/27/22, 2:37 PM
by gizmo on 9/27/22, 1:50 PM
This basically turns phone/video chat into a feature. If this actually works with 10.000 people in a room as advertised Zoom is in a lot of trouble.
by dannyw on 9/27/22, 2:42 PM
Why did Cloudflare say "encryption" but not "end-to-end encryption"?
Should we be reading deeper into this?
by tschellenbach on 9/27/22, 3:25 PM
This is the same approach that getstream.io (disclaimer, my startup) and agora.io take for video calling. A global edge network with support for SFU cascading is optimal for the call quality.
by mjreacher on 9/27/22, 1:57 PM
I for one think this could be a very useful idea for my use case (education) and am looking forward to see how it turns out.
by brightball on 9/27/22, 2:09 PM
I've been wondering when CF was going to build this for years. It only made sense given the moving parts in WebRTC.