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Convos IRC client now supports video chat

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11–20 of 28 posts

Re: Convos IRC client now supports video chat

#11
post #2

I just wondered why STUN/TURN was needed in particular, if you can communicate details over IRC, having an external service for this when other p2p communication methods can be made using IRC seemed strange. But then I remembered DCC (and xDCC) are unusable these days because of NAT. So STUN wouldn't help, but you need the TURN relay. I really can't wait until IPv6 is everywhere; I believe it will allow p2p to have a…

I used DCC for years behind NAT, just forwarded a port range and configured my client to always use that port range. It takes a minute to set up, but then it's seamless.

I have UPNP turned off, but can't it do similar, automatically?

Re: Convos IRC client now supports video chat

#12
post #2

I just wondered why STUN/TURN was needed in particular, if you can communicate details over IRC, having an external service for this when other p2p communication methods can be made using IRC seemed strange. But then I remembered DCC (and xDCC) are unusable these days because of NAT. So STUN wouldn't help, but you need the TURN relay. I really can't wait until IPv6 is everywhere; I believe it will allow p2p to have a…

Still need STUN servers in order to tell you your externally-accessible address, no?

Re: Convos IRC client now supports video chat

#13
post #2

I just wondered why STUN/TURN was needed in particular, if you can communicate details over IRC, having an external service for this when other p2p communication methods can be made using IRC seemed strange. But then I remembered DCC (and xDCC) are unusable these days because of NAT. So STUN wouldn't help, but you need the TURN relay. I really can't wait until IPv6 is everywhere; I believe it will allow p2p to have a…

Still need STUN servers in order to tell you your externally-accessible address, no?

DCC handles that; since the IRC server presumably knows your public IP address.

Gets muddy with bouncers, you generally have an option to override this in bouncers and clients.

Re: Convos IRC client now supports video chat

#14
post #2

I just wondered why STUN/TURN was needed in particular, if you can communicate details over IRC, having an external service for this when other p2p communication methods can be made using IRC seemed strange. But then I remembered DCC (and xDCC) are unusable these days because of NAT. So STUN wouldn't help, but you need the TURN relay. I really can't wait until IPv6 is everywhere; I believe it will allow p2p to have a…

I say this all the time about IPv6. I started running a dual stack with an HE IPv6 tunnel in 2002 thinking I was getting ahead of the curve. 18 years later and I'm still way out front :(

Re: Convos IRC client now supports video chat

#15
post #5
post #2

I just wondered why STUN/TURN was needed in particular, if you can communicate details over IRC, having an external service for this when other p2p communication methods can be made using IRC seemed strange. But then I remembered DCC (and xDCC) are unusable these days because of NAT. So STUN wouldn't help, but you need the TURN relay. I really can't wait until IPv6 is everywhere; I believe it will allow p2p to have a…

I always wonder why P2P applications don't just use Tor hidden services to communicate: - NAT hole-punching for free - end-to-end encrypted for free - peers identified by a hash of their public key, so no CA or similar required - no metadata leakage It seems like the perfect solution, but hardly anyone does it. https://ricochet.im/ is a chat program that works this way, but the client is pretty minimal.

So I used to live in the woods where not a single ISP would give you a public address and used TOR to ssh back into the house.

You might be able to play freeciv or text chat this way but it’s just way too slow and jittery for video. This is part of the design of the thing and will probably get worse over time as security improves.

Re: Convos IRC client now supports video chat

#16
How is this still IRC? :)

I'd prefer to see more expansion on the IRC protocol side rather than clients adding their own non-standard augmentations.

Things like server-side scrollback, connection persistence without a bouncer, push notifications for mobile would be great. I currently use Quassel server with QuasselDroid app to achieve these things with works well but again it's a client thing only. IRCCloud does a similar thing though not self-hosted.

I'd love to see IRC make some big strides like it did in the 90s. I don't care about video etc though. It shouldn't become another whatsapp or facebook messenger. Though embedding pictures would be useful.

I know IRCv3 is a thing but development is way too slow and isn't really taking the new requirements of the mobile world into account.

But clients adding proprietary stuff that only works with themselves has nothing to do with the idea of IRC.

Re: Convos IRC client now supports video chat

#17

How is this still IRC? :) I'd prefer to see more expansion on the IRC protocol side rather than clients adding their own non-standard augmentations. Things like server-side scrollback, connection persistence without a bouncer, push notifications for mobile would be great. I currently use Quassel server with QuasselDroid app to achieve these things with works well but again it's a client thing only. IRCCloud does a si…

Don't new features go against the whole IRC idea?

The original protocol is amazingly simple. But if you want to support connection persistence, you will need to pretty much redesign it - and in this case, why not go XMPP or Matrix? Both can already do that, and they are open source as well.

Re: Convos IRC client now supports video chat

#18

How is this still IRC? :) I'd prefer to see more expansion on the IRC protocol side rather than clients adding their own non-standard augmentations. Things like server-side scrollback, connection persistence without a bouncer, push notifications for mobile would be great. I currently use Quassel server with QuasselDroid app to achieve these things with works well but again it's a client thing only. IRCCloud does a si…

> How is this still IRC? :)

Here is an explanation.[0]

[0] https://xkcd.com/1782/

Re: Convos IRC client now supports video chat

#19

How is this still IRC? :) I'd prefer to see more expansion on the IRC protocol side rather than clients adding their own non-standard augmentations. Things like server-side scrollback, connection persistence without a bouncer, push notifications for mobile would be great. I currently use Quassel server with QuasselDroid app to achieve these things with works well but again it's a client thing only. IRCCloud does a si…

>I'd prefer to see more expansion on the IRC protocol side rather than clients adding their own non-standard augmentations.

Unless there's a Council of IRC who decrees changes in protocol (and if there is, they clearly aren't doing their job), then "proprietary" features is how the protocol expansion happens - provided the features are useful and easy to implement (read: documented), other clients will jump on the bandwagon. An example of this already happening is colors in IRC - mIRC defined some proprietary control codes, and now every client supports them and it's de-facto part of the standard.

I agree with your feature list, especially scrollback. All that needs to happen is some very popular IRCd taking a stand and making a trivial extension to the protocol, which reports scrollback given a particular server command. Standards be damned - clients will rush to add support for this feature, and servers will soon be seen as second class if they don't support it. It could happen so easily!

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