Hello Chrome and Firefox, meet serverless WebRTC | Hacker News Reader

Hello Chrome and Firefox, meet serverless WebRTC

github.com

71 pointsjamest22 comments

[OP / Firebase founder here] We certainly aren't trying to be disingenuous with the 'serverless' title. The piece of code on GitHub allows you to build WebRTC functionality that doesn't require you to run a signaling sever. (or, any server if you want to go that far) Though, yes, we still run and maintain the Firebase servers to make this happen.

Sorry for any confusion. I'll add some explicit language in the README on GitHub.

Thanks for checking out the code.

Thanks for clarifying!

WebRTC is really exciting from a P2P perspective, which is why I and others are sensitive about the terminology.

This is a really cool use of Firebase, to have zero discovery servers to deploy for a working WebRTC setup.

We're headed into so many new fronts with web based technologies, that the terminology can get muddled depending on your perspective.

Keep rocking it!

Firebase is useful here because you can use it to handle state changes for iceCandidates and not worry about using your own server. You can also store data with Firebase API. By 'serverless', OP means that you don't need to have your own server/database and can host your app as a standalone html file, letting firebase take care of your backend.

It's not severless. Jerks.

It is serverless in the sense that you don't need to have or maintain a server. I think this is consistent with how most people use the term.

I don't maintain HN, but that doesn't mean HN is serverless.

Here are some other stories that use the term serverless:

http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=Ser...

I feel like it's a term that has a generally well-understood meaning. What other term would you prefer?

I think it depends on the context. In this case, I think that "serverless" would mean "doesn't depend on an external server, only the two clients", because that's the only really important distinction you could make about servers.

I would prefer "hosted" or something like that.

Maybe I just don't know of the well-understood meaning, but when I read "serverless" here, I was excited, thinking that they truly built something peer-to-peer.

[Firebase founder here] We weren't trying to be disingenuous with the title. Keep in mind that basically any web technology, including P2P ones, do actually use servers. If you're using a domain name, for example, you're probably going to use a DNS server. If you're using Google Analytics or any other addon in a web page, you'll be using their servers. If you're on a 3G connection your data is probably being proxied by a server somewhere. Even BitTorrent has trackers. The list goes on...

Our point is that you don't need to run a server. You can treat Firebase like you treat DNS -- a service that is there for you to use but that you don't need to operate.

So wait, is Firebase 100% free? If it is, I kind of see the argument you're trying to make. If not, the user is PAYING for a server (or part of one) to host a critical part of what makes their video app work.

The big problem is that moving most of your app logic to the front end does NOT necessarily make it serverless. In the case for this WebRTC project, it relies less on the server than the Google demo, but you still have a server. This is why many folks (including myself) are thinking that the title is a bit disingenuous.

We'll have a free plan, but in general, no it's not free. Neither is DNS though (it's free for the end user of course, but not the developer, just like Firebase).

Cloudflare would never say (and never has said) "meet serverless DNS", because I'm still paying for a DNS server somewhere over at Cloudflare. Sure, it's a different server, but we are still paying (basically the same amount, if not more) for a server.

The title of this post should be "meet a more client heavy version of WebRTC", because that's what it is.

I challenge you to find a way to use fewer servers... WebRTC depends on them for signaling. We're just providing a tool to make that easier.

See: http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/webrtc/basics/

"In the real world, WebRTC needs servers..."

Exactly - the title should be "here's an easier way to do WebRTC with less backend code, less servers, and more frontend code", not "meet serverless WebRTC". Can you appreciate the difference between these two statements?

What the heck -- how have we redefined "serverless" to mean anything but "without servers"? I second the use of "hosted" or "hosted free as in beer" or pretty much any marketing term we want to apply to this as long as it doesn't use words that mean the opposite of reality.

Peer-to-peer systems still use DNS "servers". Pure P2P WebRTC systems still need STUN "servers". In fact, one of the peers in a P2P system could also be considered a server.

"Serverless" as you define it would describe nothing in existence today. I think the way most people perceive the term is simply to mean reliance on servers that you don't have to build and run.

you don't need to maintain servers at many modern cloud/PaaS providers.

It looks like Firebase forked a generic node.js app (https://github.com/anantn/gupshup) that could run on any node.js-compatible platform, and modified it into a Firebase-only app. "serverless" is not the right adjective for that change, really.

By serverless, I expected peer to peer without a server. This still uses a server.

Curious. What made you choose an indian word for the project?

Nothing in particular other than I'm from India :)

When naming projects I usually look to the English thesaurus first, failing which I'll use a Hindi or Tamil word.

Not serverless. Requires firebase.

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