Why we need crossbar.io (WAMP) when there is WebRTC?

Question

As far as I understand, crossbar provides transparent connection between clients. So clients can communicate with each other. WebRTC does almost same thing, without a central server(apart from signalling server) with lower latency.

So why we need crossbar in the first place?

Am I missing something?

Why do we need two of anything? Everyone can just own the same make and model of car, right? Everyone can eat the same bread, go to the same gym, have the same dreams... — Robert Harvey, Feb 16 '19 at 01:35
@RobertHarvey I am, btw, particularly tired of that one dream of yours. You know which one I'm talking about. — Dave Newton, Feb 16 '19 at 01:37
@RobertHarvey No, they are not same. Different technologies doing almost same thing. I'm definitely missing something here and asking for the missing piece. — ramazan polat, Feb 16 '19 at 01:42

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 17 '19 at 06:16

4

The two technologies are very different from one another.

WebRTC enables voice, video and data to be passed in real time directly between browsers. It has no notion of messaging, signaling or even a network architecture. It is a kind of a building block that got implemented inside a web browser and you can now use. When using it, you'll still be needing servers to get one browser/device connected to another browser/device - a signaling server.

From looking at the site of crossbar.io, it seems like this is an open source framework that implements signaling for IOT devices - it can connect devices to a centralized server that handles the control messages and signals that get sent between the devices and/or users.

Here's the interesting thing - if Crossbar were to handle voice/video or low latency data transmission - they'd probably end up integrating WebRTC. And on the other hand, you can use Crossbar as a signaling mechanism for WebRTC.

Apples to oranges.

answered Feb 17 '19 at 06:16

Tsahi Levent-Levi

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It looks like the only advantage of Crossbar over WebRTC is pub/sub. Apart from this there is no need to use Crossbar.io, or there is but I'm now aware of it yet. – ramazan polat Feb 17 '19 at 16:44
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They are orthogonal... Crossbar does pub/sub. WebRTC does voice/video – Tsahi Levent-Levi Feb 18 '19 at 16:39
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WebRTC also carries data, not just audio/video. – ramazan polat Feb 18 '19 at 17:59
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Yes. So? In order to use WebRTC's data channel you need to start by signaling information to a server. To do that signaling you can use Crossbar. – Tsahi Levent-Levi Feb 24 '19 at 05:40

Why we need crossbar.io (WAMP) when there is WebRTC?

1 Answers1