Answer to Scott’s Realtime Web Competition article
I do not agree or would like to comment some of the points in Scott’s post at: http://scottbw.wordpress.com/2012/08/08/realtime-web-competition-hots-up/ about Realtime Web Competition.
* …. proprietary backend solutions using Flash … *
=> the Flash protocols are called RTMP RTMPT and RTMFP.
Those protocols are not so much proprietary since there is for example
an Open Source Project called Red5 that implements those protocols.
The only remaining really proprietary part of Flash streaming is P2P.
You can see some overview in the evolution of P2P in Flash in the graphics here:
http://labs.adobe.com/
But I think commercial clones like Wowza already have implemented it too.
Or for example companies like Justin.tv claim to have coded their own
Flash streaming cluster based (although not sharing their code of
course).
*… it lends itself very well to add-hoc collaboration such as
whiteboards and video chat, and could well replace many of the – often
expensive – existing solutions widely used in enterprise and education
alike….*
=> We at Apache OpenMeetings are using RTMP with Red5 to implement
Live Conferencing. We provide integrations for Sakai, Moodle, StudIP, ATutor and lots of website CMS:
http://incubator.apache.org/
There are also other Open Source project that already act as replacement, even without webRTC.
*…Looking ahead, its hard to say whether there will be a consolidation of WebRTC around one of the competing protocols, or a face-off between the two camps. …*
=> The real question about the webRTC thing is which codec’s are
supported. Browsers do not support even for simple Video On Demand
(VOD) / simple streaming the same codecs. The codec makes the quality
and contains functionality like echo cancellation, HD quality and
low bandwidth consumption. If you then push those packets using RTMP,
RTSP, RTP, HTTP-Tunneling, TCP or UDP or whatever is really
irrelevant.