If we step back to before 1993, publishing and finding content on the Internet was a somewhat obscure, geeky thing that a very few people cared about and very few knew how to do. It involved gopher servers, ftp sites, archie, veronica, WAIS, USENET newsgroups, etc., and this "World-Wide Web" service primarily demonstrated via the server at info.cern.ch. It was an amazing period of time for those of us who were there, but the number of users was quite small.
Then NCSA released Mosaic in 1993 … and suddenly everything changed.
Anyone could create a web page that "regular" people could see on their computers. Anyone could download Mosaic and use it. Anyone could share their sites with the installation of server software.
The Web was truly born into public consciousness… the creation of Web-based content was democratized so that anyone could do it… the creativity of developers was unleashed… a zillion new business models were thought of… and the Internet fundamentally changed.
Fast-forward to today…
… and the "Web" is still predominantly a document-based system. You make HTTP queries to retrieve pages and send HTML and XML documents back and forth between web browsers and web servers.
Separately, we have a world of telecommunication apps that have moved to IP. These are not just voice, but they are also video, instant messaging, data-sharing. They have moved so far beyond what we traditionally think of as "telecommunications". The apps use wideband audio, HD video, white boarding, sharing and so many capabilities that cannot have even been remotely imagined by the creators of the PSTN and all the legacy telcos and carriers. They are "rich communications" applications that have severely disrupted the traditional telco world.
The problem is that creating those rich, real-time communications apps is somewhat of a black art.
It is the realm of "telephony developers" or "VoIP developers" who can understand the traditional world of telcos and can interpret the seven zillion RFCs of SIP (as all the traditional telcos have glommed all sorts of legacy PSTN baggage onto what started out as a simple idea).
Deploying those rich communication apps also involves the step of getting the application into the hands of users. They have to download an application binary – or install a Flash app or Java plugin into their browser. Or on a mobile device install an app onto their mobile smartphone.
The world of rich communication experiences is held back by development problems and deployment problems.
Enter WebRTC/RTCWEB
Suddenly, any web developer can code something as easy as this into their web page:
------
$.phono({
onReady: function() {
this.phone.dial("sip:9991443046@sip.example.net")
} } );
------
Boom… they have a button on their web page that someone can click and initiate a communications session … in ANY web browser. [1 – this is not pure "WebRTC" code… see my footnote below.]
Using JavaScript, that pretty much every web developer knows… and using the web browsers that everyone is using.
And without any kind of Flash or Java plugins.
Boom… no more development problems. Boom… no more deployment problems. [2]
WebRTC is about baking rich, real-time communications into the fabric of the Web and the Internet so that millions of new business models can emerge and millions of new applications can be born.
It is about unleashing the creativity and talent of the zillions of web developers out there and turning the "Web" into more than just a document-based model but instead into a rich communications vehicle. It's about moving these apps from an obscure art into a commonplace occurrence.
We really have absolutely no idea what will happen…
… when we make it as simple for ANY developer to create a rich, real-time communications experience as it is to create a web page.
But we're about to find out… and done right it will fundamentally change the Internet again.
If we think the legacy telco crowd are upset now about how "VoIP" has screwed them over (from their point of view), they haven't seen anything yet. WebRTC/RTCWEB doesn't need any of their legacy models. It bypasses all of that in ways that only the Internet enables. It is NOT shackled to any legacy infrastructure – it can use new peer-to-peer models as well as more traditional models. And it goes so far beyond what we think of as "communication" today. [3] The potential is there for so much more than just voice and/or video… it's about establishing a real-time, synchronous "communications" session between two (or more) endpoints – what media are used by that session is up to the apps: voice, video, chat, data-sharing, gaming… we really don't know what all people will do with it!
I see it as the next stage of the evolution of the Internet, disrupting to an even greater degree the business models of today and changing yet again how we all communicate. The Internet will become even more critical to our lives in ways we can't even really imagine.
THAT is why RTCWEB (in the IETF) and WebRTC (in W3C) are so critically important … and so important to get deployed.
[1] The code I'm showing is for a library, "Phono", that in fact will sit on top of the WebRTC/RTCWEB protocols. It is an example of the new apps and business models that will emerge in that it makes it simple for JavaScript developers to create these apps. Underneath, it will use the rich communications protocols of WebRTC/RTCWEB. Someone else will come up with other ways to do this in JavaScript… or python… or ruby… or whatever language. But because they will all use the WebRTC/RTCWEB protocols, they will interoperate… and work in any browser.
In full disclosure I should also note that Phono is a service of Voxeo, my previous employer.
[2] And BOOM… there go the heads exploding within the legacy telco crowd when they start to fully understand how badly the Internet has rendered them even MORE irrelevant!
[3] Note that a WebRTC app certainly can communicate with the traditional PSTN or other legacy systems. My point is that it is not required to do so. One usage of WebRTC will, I'm sure, be to "web-enable" many VoIP systems (ex. IP-PBXs) and services. But other uses will emerge that are not connected at all to the PSTN or any legacy systems.
Image credit: dmosiondz on Flickr
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OK, now my head is hurting. This sounds like the jumping off point for another revolution – even though we’re still getting our heads around the one we’re in. This is exciting, and definitely disruptive. I look forward to following your thoughts as we move ahead. Thanks for putting this into terms I can relate to (being a one-time telco exec who struggled with this whole Internet thing a long time ago!)
Phono, phono, phono … now *where* have I heard that name before ???
Phono, phono, phono … now *where* have I heard that name before???
If only it was so simple … I look forward to serving up ads that contain
$.phono({
onReady: function() {
this.phone.dial(“sip:+1-900-Pay-Fluffy”)
} } );
Part of this being successful is going to rely on an identity framework where people know where they are calling before they dial.
Ha! Well, yes, there are all those little security details to finalize… 😉
And we as an industry have to get WebRTC/RTCWEB in a way that is truly interoperable between ALL browsers! 🙂
So yes, there are still a few minefields along the way…
One missing-piece question I had for some time: If, by coding for half a day, someone can setup a web-server on their PC which allows few people to converse with encrypted-media, why would any state authority allow it freely. The ‘state’s always liked to do authorized-tap either for security reasons or for censorship. The WebRTC technology is definitely disruptive in terms of ease of access to tools to set-up conversations but will its usage be allowed freely? If authorities want to enforce control which Network Elements will be the target? Servers ? Users ?
There’s still the fundamental reality that you need a transport that is capable of bounding loss and delay; and not only in the average, but also in the outliers. Unfortunately, the contended Internet doesn’t consistently have that property. So it’s a bit early to write off the telcos as having a role in real-time comms.
However, WebRTC is definitely disruptive in that it frees people from the legacy patterns, expectations and constraints of telephony.
All good questions… because the reality is that anyone can set up a WebRTC session between two browsers without any kind of intermediary. So yes, the conversation can be completely outside of “state” control… with no real way for them to even know that the communication is occurring. And even if you have to go through choke points like a set of a few ISPs, you could always use a VPN to encrypt all traffic through the ISPs (unless VPNs are outlawed).
As I wrote in the article, WebRTC is all about baking real-time communications into the distributed and decentralized fabric of the web… and we do NOT yet fully understand exactly how disruptive that will be!
Martin, yes, I’ve read your newsletters on this point and while I understand the concern I’m not ready to say that the plain old Internet can’t deal with the contention. Back in the early 2000’s I was the product manager for Mitel’s “remote teleworker” product and there was great concern from the traditional telecom folks within Mitel about this idea that we were going to put an IP phone out at some random point on the Internet where there was no QoS or anything. In fact, some folks wanted us to say that it had “cell-phone voice quality” so that we wouldn’t set high expectations about voice quality. The reality was that through appropriate codecs, jitter buffers and other technologies the connections almost always worked and almost always had outstanding quality (usually FAR better than cellphones).
The other reality is that we’ve seen OTT providers like Skype and others providing excellent services that work the vast majority of the time. We’re seeing new and improved codecs coming into the market. We’re seeing new traffic shaping technologies. The list goes on…
If the (brief) history of the Internet has shown us anything, it is that the Internet’s capacity to adapt and change is boundless. We’ll see what happens in the time ahead.
And no, I haven’t written off the telcos as having a role in real-time comms. I just don’t know that the “role” they may have will necessarily be the one they would like to have! 😉
Its power of disruption boils down to this – “sip:9991443046@sip.example.net”. Who is the provider of sip.example.net? How many such providers will there be? We have a proliferation of communication networks – Facebook, Facetime, GTalk, Skype, Mobile numbers….
So this could become the de-facto communication technology which is a great step forward (thats what SIP was supposed to become). But then it will not be truly disruptive without federation. When i click on that ‘Call’ button, it should just work – regardless of which network i’m a part of and which one the other person belongs to.
Also the developer will need access to a good relay network for this to just work. A ‘CDN’ of TURN servers.
Dan,
Good Stuff. I work within the telecom industry, and it is disconcerting to see how deep the ubiquity of IP is removing sources of revenue from our business. It seems to me that the Telco providers and many of the services provider are going to become irrelevant with time. As the fabric of the major carriers networks becomes more stable and of much larger scale to support increases in bandwidth, their primary relevance seems to be more of tansport highways for pure public IP and Private IP/MPLS networks. All in-network voice features/services are majorly impacted by the advent of WebRTC. Not to mention Voice service Tax receipts to the FCCs.