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What options does a web developer currently have for implementing client-side peer-to-peer systems in the web browser? Some hypothetical examples might be a file-sharing service that bypasses the web-server after clients find eachother, or a chat service.

What I know about:

  • the site chatroulette uses some flash technology as discussed here.

  • And I am also aware of Opera Unity which extends the browser model to encompass both a client and a server, as well as this firefox plugin which works similarly

  • I also just came across this blog post related to the Joose js framework, but am not yet sure if it is relevant here.

  • Support for this kind of thing seems like it might or might not be supported by websockets in HTML5 and has been discussed here and here and here.

Community
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jberryman
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  • Fun question, I'm very curious to see what we find here. (+1) – Platinum Azure Jan 27 '11 at 20:50
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    Just to point out, websockets are part of JavaScript NOT HTML (which is the new name for HTML5) – Alex Jan 28 '11 at 09:35
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    Would vote to reopen if I could; the answer is the DataChannel API. See also: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10218250/transfering-json-between-browsers-with-webrtc – psema4 Oct 28 '12 at 16:17
  • Thanks psema4. I'm not sure why it was closed. The only explanation is that this will elicit "extended discussion" in that the answer is likely to change over time. Perhaps it should be a community wiki? – jberryman Oct 28 '12 at 22:24
  • Thanks for the suggestion jberryman; I've flagged the question for review. – psema4 Oct 30 '12 at 19:30

2 Answers2

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I recommend you to take a look at RTMFP protocol in Adobe Flash Player - it seems you can build something close to what you're asking with it.

Michael Pliskin
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I was looking for the same thing, this library looks apealing: rtmfp-api/

Paul Wand
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