go-webrtc-datachannel

go-webrtc-datachannel

This is a planning / brainstorming area for building services using webrtc-datachannel and golang. The end result is ideally a library that satisfies the following scenerios:

Allowing a javascript client to communicate directly with a NAT'd server

This could be done with regular AJAX style request, or with websockets. However, if we implemented this using the same protocols as webrtc-datachannels, we would be able to do NAT punching. This would be useful, for example, if a go-server is running on a virtual machine on a users laptop, but being controlled by javascript client in the browser.

Ideal outcome: A hosted javascript client that can communicate with a go-server that is NAT'd, such as running in a Vagrant image on a users laptop.

For a proof of concept, supporting Chome or Firefox's (ideally both) datachannel implementation would be ideal. As of writing, Chrome and Firefox have different implementations.

Allowing two NAT'd go servers to communicate directly

At this point we really just care about NAT punching using STUN/ICE. However, webrtc-datachannel wraps up which part of these should be supported, and google hosts a STUN server that we could use.

Ideal outcome: Two go-servers, that can be running anywhere, but are able to establish an bi-directional communication channel.

Other notes

• We do not care about the video/voice aspects of webrtc, only the datachannel
• This library should be as idomic Go as possible.
• Should be relatively easy to make this work with existing go services, such as etcd

Additional reading

Some resources on the protocols:

• http://www.webrtc.org/firefox#TOC-DataChannels
• http://www.webrtc.org/chrome#TOC-Data-Channels-
• http://www.w3.org/TR/webrtc/#datachannel
• https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/03/webrtc-data-channels-for-great-multiplayer/
• http://peerjs.com/
• https://github.com/denis-beurive/GoStun/blob/master/src/stun/doc.go
• http://www.webrtc.org/reference/architecture

Please contibute by sending pull requests for ideas or research, or better yet, CODE! :D