Design and implement a hybrid WebRTC signalling mechanism for unidirectional & bi-directional video conferencing

WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communication) is a technology that enables browser-to-browser communication. Therefore, a signalling mechanism must be negotiated to create a connection between peers. The main aim of this paper is to create and implement a WebRTC hybrid signalling mechanism named (WebNSM) for video conferencing based on the Socket.io (API) mechanism. WebNSM was designed over different topologies such as simplex, star and mesh. Therefore it offers several communications at the same time such as one-to-one (unidirectional/bidirectional), one-to-many (unidirectional) and many-to-many (bi-directional) without any downloading or installation. In this paper, WebRTC video conferencing was accomplished via LAN and WAN networks, including the evaluation of resources in WebRTC like bandwidth consumption, CPU performance, memory usage, Quality of Experience (QoE) and maximum links and RTPs calculation. This paper presents a novel signalling mechanism among different users, devices and networks to offer video conferencing using various topologies at the same time, as well as other typical features such as using the same server, determining room initiator, keeping the communication active even if the initiator or another peer leaves, etc. This scenario highlights the limitations of CPU performance, bandwidth consumption and the use of different topologies for WebRTC video conferencing.

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This research was funded by the Ministry of Higher
Education in the Republic of Iraq, according to the
scholarship number (1469) in (03/04/2013) to sponsor the
first author to pursue his PhD research