Introduction to Video Conferencing
Understand the difference between everyday client-server communication and video conferencing.
Introduction
The Internet is designed to allow communication between clients and servers. Typically, the client initiates a request, and the server responds to it. The flow is also similar for real-time applications where users communicate with each other. However, because the request of each user relays through an intermediate server, an additional lag or delay is inevitable. When it comes to video conferencing, the flow may not be optimal, especially when the server is too far away from the user, because it can add delay and lag due to the size of the data and result in glitchy playback.
We know that user-perceived latency mainly depends on the transfer time and processing time. Usually, live streams don’t require a lot of processing, and are forwarded from servers that can be miles away from users. Let’s discuss some available ways to solve this problem of extra miles.
Real-time communication
Real-time communication requires the shortest path to transmit data, which is possible through peer-to-peer communication. Still, it becomes problematic when participants are behind different
Note: A multimedia session is used to identify media-related metadata essential for media transmission, processing, etc. It is also helpful for identifying and enabling device-specific features compatible with other participants.
Points to Ponder
Which events should be considered live/real-time events?
Signaling and connecting
Signaling refers to the successful initiation of a multimedia session between participants willing to participate in the audio/video conference. However, before the communication starts, clients must exchange and agree on multimedia session information, such as communication addresses (IP and port), media descriptions (text, audio, video, etc.), and other metadata. This information is usually sent via the session description protocol (SDP).
The session description protocol (SDP) is a format for describing session information in a standardized form. It is just a description format, must be delivered using protocols like Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) or