We are now almost 8 years into WebRTC, and it seems like the same mistakes developers made 8 years ago are still being made today. Here are some common WebRTC mistakes that I see on a daily basis.
Last week, I took a quick business trip to Beijing for Agora.io’s RTC Expo event. I was invited by Agora.io to present there about a WebRTC topic, and I decided on “Common WebRTC mistakes and how to avoid them”. Why? Because it fits nicely with the fact that I’ve been promoting my WebRTC course recently, but also because it is an issue that crops up on a weekly basis.
RTC Expo is an interesting event. To begin with, it is a local event in China. It runs in three separate tracks and it was well attended – the rooms were usually filled to the brim during sessions. The number of foreigners could be counted on the fingers of a single hand. Agora.io offered there live translation, automated using Google Translator. During every session, the spoken words were transcribed and then translated to either Chinese or English, showing both languages to the side of the big screen. The results were mixed, and at times funny. It allowed understanding the gist of what was said but required some grasp of the language spoken by the presenter.
For my own presentation, I decided to work out with a simple structure:
- Give a short explanation of WebRTC
- Continue with a shopping list of common WebRTC mistakes
This structure gave me the ability to fit the content to the length of the session quite nicely, while driving home the three main concerns:
- Developers are clueless about STUN and TURN configuration and meaning
- Picking a signaling project in github is a tricky/risky endeavor
- Lack of knowledge brings with it mistakes. Better learn WebRTC
There are a lot more mistakes, but these definitely make it to the top of the list.
If you are interested in learning more, then here is the deck I used:
UPDATE: Got the video up on YouTube now 🙂 I’ve embedded it below.
- If you are interested in solving such issues and reducing the risks of your WebRTC project, then I can always suggest my WebRTC courses
- Thinking of scaling your WebRTC service? This ebook on best practices in scaling WebRTC deployments can come in handy