While WebRTC is a protocol that allows direct communication between individuals on the internet, using their browser, there is a bottleneck that needs to be resolved. WebRTC does not have a “signaling protocol”, which allows the initial contact, the “handshake” between two computers, to be performed without the assistance of a dedicated server. The trouble is that firewalls are preventing that initial communication from happening. They close your computer within a space that others, on the outside, cannot penetrate. Now there is some important work in progress to establish an open peer-to-peer signaling protocol that will overcome the handshake bottleneck.
More at http://openpeer.org/
Open Peer is peer-to-peer signalling protocol taking advantages of the IETF advances of firewall penetration techniques for moving media and adds a layer to performs the media signalling in a peer-to-peer fashion but does expect that a minimal requirement of rendezvous servers existing. Beyond the initial rendezvous to get past firewalls, the servers should drop out of the protocol flow and are no longer required. Open Peer was designed with these main goals in mind. There is also a reference here to a previous article about WebRTC
Via Sepp Hasslberger
