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Hello Firefox, this is Chrome calling

blog.chromium.org

141–150 of 183 posts

Re: Hello Firefox, this is Chrome calling

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's never going to happen b/c there is too much legacy infrastructure and the benefit is marginal. All current home routers are configured to do NAT, so you're not going to be able to have a Skype 2.0 be P2P b/c then you'd need to explain to millions of people how to reconfigure their routers. Also P2P opens a whole new can of worms when it comes to security.

> That's never going to happen b/c there is too much legacy infrastructure and the benefit is marginal. It is going to have to happen, or there will be no internet. > All current home routers are configured to do NAT, so you're not going to be able to have a Skype 2.0 be P2P b/c then you'd need to explain to millions of people how to reconfigure their routers. Current home routers will be replaced within a year or tw…

You're also assuming that there won't be NAT with IPv6; I don't know that that is a safe assumption.

"Current home routers will be replaced within a year or two."

Yeah right! My grandma isn't gunna be changing her router. And she'll be pissed if her stuff stopped working.

At then end of the day, if you have the choice between making a NAT friendly product that everyone can use and a non NAT friendly product that has some extra privacy - you'll be choosing the NAT friendly option.

"Firewalls have been around for a long time." The thing in windows that everyone disables?

NAT is transparent and fool proof. How can you ensure a 3rd party won't be able to connect to your fancy new P2P chat client? Security holes are pervasive in networking code so without NAT and a with a bit of sloppy code, the "bad guys" can at any time connect directly to your computer. Can you imagine the chaos that would happen if there was a zero day bug in a P2P Skype. With NAT 99% of your problems are gone. It's physically impossible to connect to a computer that doesn't have port forwarding.

Unless the US gov't comes in an enforces a switch to IPv6 (like it did with digital TVs and all those subsidized converter boxes) directly connecting to computers isn't going to happen.

Re: Hello Firefox, this is Chrome calling

#142
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You fail to get my point, why do you think that that the US has has little issue with allowing encryption to be used these days? How strong is your 'locked' box? It's only a bunch of 1s and 0s.

Unless the NSA/FBI/whatever is decades ahead in mathematical research from what is common in academia, or has computers that are many orders of magnitude faster than what we have today, well encrypted data is basically random data to anyone who lacks the keys. That's a pretty tough locked box.

"Unless the NSA/FBI/whatever is decades ahead in mathematical research from what is common in academia"

I wouldn't be surprised. Basically 9/10 people that study cryptography in the US end up working for the NSA. Look at the NSA's budget, and then look at how many cryptography professors there are.

However, that said, IF they managed to decrypt AES somehow, they are severely limited in what they can do with that information. Basically anything they do with the decrypted data has to in no way alert anyone that they have that capability.

So that data DEFINITELY can't be used in court, nor for a whole array of other more covert operations.

Re: Hello Firefox, this is Chrome calling

#143
post #66

Yes, please, please, please kill Skype. Kill it mercilessly. Using it has been the worst experience I've ever had with an application. I've been in a long distance relationship for a few years now and Skype has sadly been our main mode of video communication. The app crashes when I search chat history, can take upwards of 90+% of my CPU, literally forcing me to shut down every other application I have running. The fo…

I'm the opposite. I don't want to use anything except Skype for voice chat. Nothing comes even remotely close in sound quality. If I had the same cpu/crash issues as you I'd be loudly cursing it's name. Luckily I don't and until something can provide better quality I won't be using it.

Re: Hello Firefox, this is Chrome calling

#144
post #66

Yes, please, please, please kill Skype. Kill it mercilessly. Using it has been the worst experience I've ever had with an application. I've been in a long distance relationship for a few years now and Skype has sadly been our main mode of video communication. The app crashes when I search chat history, can take upwards of 90+% of my CPU, literally forcing me to shut down every other application I have running. The fo…

If both of you have Apple devices, I highly recommend FaceTime. In my experience, it has better video quality than Skype.

Re: Hello Firefox, this is Chrome calling

#145
post #20
post #12

I feel like DataChannels are the best part of the WebRTC standard (or would be, if they were usable): a true p2p connection allowing transfer of arbitrary data without plugins or anything. This gives multiplayer games, file transfers, realtime chat and collaborative editors (let your imagination run wild...) and the only thing a server is required for is establishing the connection (and saving state). This functional…

Unfortunately, if this page is accurate, DataChannels don't really work yet: http://www.webrtc.org/chrome#TOC-Data-Channels- A shame, because I have a use in mind for them. :)

Firefox has as full DataChannel implementation (SCTP-based), while Chrome has a partial one (RTP-based). They don't interoperate yet. I implemented most of the partial implementation and am working on the full implementation now.

I'm glad that you're excited about them. I am too. I hope to have it ready for you soon :).

Re: Hello Firefox, this is Chrome calling

#146
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They recently appeared behind an about:flags flag. :)

Well, when I heard that WebRTC was in Chrome stable I thought this must surely include DataChannel, since it's simpler than a full-blown video stack. So although it being behind a flag is better news than it not being there at all, I was still pretty disappointed when I read that page :) edit: also, I don't see it as an about:flags flag. edit 2: I should just tunnel data through video then, what could possibly go wro…

It's not quite that simple. We (I work with the Chrome team) have an RTP-based data channel (sort of what you call "tunnel through the video" already in Chrome), but it provides no congestion control or reliability. To provide those, the IETF has proposed as the standard to use SCTP. Firefox has already integrated SCTP into their implementation, and we're working to get it into Chrome. So, you can start using the API now, but it'll get much better soon.

Re: Hello Firefox, this is Chrome calling

#147
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, if this page is accurate, DataChannels don't really work yet: http://www.webrtc.org/chrome#TOC-Data-Channels- A shame, because I have a use in mind for them. :)

Firefox has as full DataChannel implementation (SCTP-based), while Chrome has a partial one (RTP-based). They don't interoperate yet. I implemented most of the partial implementation and am working on the full implementation now. I'm glad that you're excited about them. I am too. I hope to have it ready for you soon :).

Good to hear.

Out of curiosity - do you mean that you're writing a full SCTP-based implementation, or completing the RTP-based one? The standard draft specifies SCTP, right?

edit: this was addressed in another post.

Re: Hello Firefox, this is Chrome calling

#148
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hopefully DataConnections will also be used for video an audio so that encrypted connections can be used.

They already are. But sure, you could do that if you wanted.

It's true that the audio, video, and data are all encrypted. But it's not the case that you can send audio and video over the data channel. Well, you could send audio and video data, but there's no way to pipe audio and video data into the data channel. That's an interesting idea, but it would probably take a long time to figure out and become part of the standard, if it ever happened at all. We'd probably need a worthwhile use case to justify it.

Re: Hello Firefox, this is Chrome calling

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By your own admission, Skype is the best video communication platform that exists but is far from perfect. It's hard to disagree. Why isn't someone creating something better?

How do you compete with free ?

With free.

Re: Hello Firefox, this is Chrome calling

#150
post #66

Yes, please, please, please kill Skype. Kill it mercilessly. Using it has been the worst experience I've ever had with an application. I've been in a long distance relationship for a few years now and Skype has sadly been our main mode of video communication. The app crashes when I search chat history, can take upwards of 90+% of my CPU, literally forcing me to shut down every other application I have running. The fo…

The funny thing is I remember Skype being great, back around the release of version 2 or 3. They just started nailing fat on everywhere they could, and haven't taken a moment to look back since.
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