[jdev] voicechat again

[Thomas Charron]

> I say we go P2P.  If anyone has doubts, they should download Skype and
> have a play with it.  I think we need to look seriously at STUN as a NAT
> traversal standard - I believe this is what Skype uses and it seems to
> work very well.
> Speex looks cool for an open codec (not that I have looked at it in
> detail)

  This isn't the proper discussion to be having in regards to the core
protocol at all.  The core protocol would be about 'connect to here with
this' or 'start accepting connections for here'.  The actuall voice
and/or video data that would be sent along shouldnt BE inside the core
protocol, and hence, making assumptions or decisions about if that data
will be P2P, client server, or whatever mix inbetween and putting THOSE
into the protocol specifically means, as you said someplace else, 'just
another Yahoo or MSN' system.

> Voice conferencing would be very nice to have (again Skype just added it)
> but user-to-user should be the first goal.  I suspect something like 90%
> of telephone calls are between two users.
> Video (webcams) have a big "wow" factor that currently is only limited by
> bad NAT traversal.  Expect this to take off in the next few years also.

  Aye, true on all accounts.  But the actual core protocol should be able
to handle all of it at once.  In reality, it's just carrying a payload
of 'They want to do this and that', which is passed to components that
would actually DO it.  This means something not concrete.  All existing
voice/video systems 'support' the use of different codex or systems.