No way. Skype is hands down the highest quality online voice chat system. I play online games with friends and we always use Skype for voice chat.

I don't know what sort of audio processing magic Skype is performing but whatever it is it's incredibly good. My group tried lots of alternatives (Ventrilo, Mumble, TeamSpeak, Steam, etc) and Skype is easily the best. All the others have issues with poor quality, speaker feedback, and/or keyboard sounds. Skype has none of that. Crystal clear voice chat even when the mic is directly beside a clickety clackety keyboard.

It'll take a hell of a lot more then a simple web client to dethrone Skype.

Silly how it must vary between places, for me skype has always been terrible for conferences, with delay of a couple seconds, constant disconnections, using ridiculous amounts of bandwidth, attempting to modify volume of other programs (!?) etc., while Ventrilo/TeamSpeak never had any issues.

It's not as if Mozilla and Google chose rinkydink codecs for WebRTC...

It's not simply about compression, Skype has a decade-long head start on tweaked echo/feedback suppression, gain control, dejitter, adaptive quality adjustment and so on. The call quality is marvelous, even with Macbook mic and lossy hotel wifi (I spend at least an hour every day using it right now).

I'm sure the browser vendors will catch up, but haven't even seen mention of some of these features yet with regard to WebRTC.

My experience is that Mumble blows Skype out of the water for background noise suppression. I can't have a call in a windy area without riding the mute button on Skype, but Mumble lets me adjust the signal/noise threshold to the point where it only picks up my voice.

The fact that it doesn't crash every other day is a nice bonus too.

No offense, and this isn't likely to be popular given the downvote above... but look harder. These are things that at they very least ARE being considered already for WebRTC.

I promise I'm not trying to be abrasive. I'll update with some links when I get a chance to get to a proper computer.

I'm sure they didn't, but Skype is just that good. Every single VOIP system my group used had issues. The microphone picking up audio from speakers and keyboard typing being two of the most problematic. Skype was the only one where that wasn't an issue. Their system just automagically filters out the cruft.

Meanwhile the voice chat built into gmail was one of the absolute worst and was completely unusable. It's a much more complicated problem than people realize.

Skype's codec (SILK) is superior to the ones listed for WebRTC.

Mumble's current codec (old version of CELT) is competitive and possibly better.

SILK was open sourced a while ago, and was combined with CELT to make the Opus voice codec, which is best-of-class and is even competitive with codecs like AAC for music compression. I suppose any client who wants to could adopt it, but none have yet.

Thanks for this info. In a another side project I'm working on video transcoding and (at this point) WebM. I'm still learning and it appears I need to familiarize myself with the lower level details of both video codecs and codecs for this sort of live calling, I'll have to check out Mumble/SILK. thanks.

> I guess I don't understand the obsession with trying to interop with Skype.

Massive existing user base?

>> I guess I don't understand the obsession with trying to >> interop with Skype.

> Massive existing user base?

Web browsers have even more massive user base though, and (insha'Allah) will include WebRTC as standard before too long.

People don't use Web browsers for video chat. They use Skype. Getting people to change will be hard, especially since the browser offers no real benefits over Skype.

I'm not saying we shouldn't try to get people to change, only that it will be hard and Skype interoperability is a very legitimate thing to want to achieve.

> People don't use Web browsers for video chat.

That was before Google Voice+Video+Hangouts. A significant number of people I contact with has already switched to Google because it is much easier to use.

I can't really see how Skype can stay in the game after browsers support VOIP. At the moment if one party doesn't have Skype, it generally means either they end up installing it or (more likely) you abandon VOIP. At the point when you can say "no problem, just go to this URL...", Skype starts to seem pretty redundant. Of course that won't happen immediately, and always the possibility the plan might get derailed somehow, so I'd agree that Skype interop would be good.

They have nat-free servers and their own automatic nat-traversal methods. Even if every single browser supports VOIP, you won't be able to use it between 2 random people using standard home connection. Until we get out of the lack of IPv4 addresses situation there can be no true peer to peer network.

Why would it be peer to peer?

That's actually an issue with skype on mobile (which I think is fixed now since they use centralized servers for mobile connections).

I assumed P2P, since Joeboy mentioned "no problem, just go to this URL...". If you're not doing this in a P2P way, then you need an account with third party and the third party sometimes needs to transfer both your signalling and your audio. That means they need to get money for that from somewhere...

In that case you're pretty much in the same position as with Skype - just without a download. Account, configuration, potential payments, etc. remain.

Edit: Actually now I see a solution - if only one person had an account, this would still be possible and he could start a call by sending some URL. So for the other person this is "just go to this URL". Unfortunately we still need a third party to handle the traffic unless you require the account holder to ensure their network is capable of acting as a server.

Sure, I wasn't particularly thinking it would be peer to peer. It can easily be through somebody other than Skype though.

WebRTC includes the various standard methods for NAT hole punching (STUN and the like)

The PeerConnection API has methods of doing NAT traversal. STUN, etc. It's already covered.

Its not enough. Need something like skype supernode functionality.

I don't understand why. I'm not a networking expert but I have some experience with networking... I mean, I've already tried a proof-of-concept out with a computer behind a NAT router and it worked fine.

Think about 2 devices (A,B) behind routers in different networks. Connections from A end up on B's router since there's no existing connection to match and connections from B end up on A's router. Unless you explicitly configure port forwarding B will never know that A is calling him.

Is that not precisely what STUN/TURN is for?

Yeah - that will do, but the TURN operator is a third party. I commented about the situation assuming Joeboy meant P2P connection without Skype or anyone else Skype-like (the URL is the only thing needed). If you're ok with someone else providing TURN and making money on it in some way to pay for the bandwidth, then yeah - that's enough.

I'll be honest, I'm currently abusing the STUN servers that Google uses in their own WebRTC examples and will need to evaluate my own options. I was under the impression that STUN could be used to establish a connection that from then forward was able to be only peer to peer after the connection through the NAT had been established.

Yeah, skype supernode concept very sexy.

The browser offers no benefit? No installation, I can tweet, facebook, text, email a single link that opens an instant video chat with me, that's not a benefit? No user account registration, etc?

There's literally no effort needed to start using it. In fact, with oAuth you can even tie into existing user bases. Chat with all of your Facebook/Twitter friends by authing those accounts and the backend telling you which friends already have it. You get built in userbases for free almost.

There are lots of things that I could do in a web browser, but still don't, yet.

Old habits die hard; that's part of the problem. But also, we're still not there yet, AFAIK, turning browser apps into applications. Sure, I can tweet a link to everyone to video chat with me. But how well will that work if my browser isn't running when they call?

Skype is an always-on native application that doesn't steal a slot in the dock/taskbar when it's not in active use, and also just claims its reasonable slice of memory and doesn't generally go up from there. I keep it running, and people call me or IM occasionally.

My browsers... I generally have Chrome & Firefox and sometimes Opera up at varying times during the day (different browsers because I don't like mixing business with personal cookies, and because Facebook gets its own browser entirely), and they're all closed down sometimes. They suck up lots of memory (my tabs tend to accumulate rapidly until it gets out of hand and I do a cull), and it's pretty frequent that some site's JavaScript gets a bit wild and steals too much processor/bandwidth as well, so I shut them down whenever I can.

So how do I use some browser tab to be always available for calls and IM? If the right browser & tab are open, how will it even notify me when someone's IM'ing me? How annoying will it be to find the right tab, to respond?

The GMail interface is superior to Thunderbird for email, but I still pull two GMail accounts into Thunderbird (along with others hosted elsewhere) because it shows the little envelope in the tray when I have new mail, and I can mouse-over that to see what it is.

Well, and I can still search my entire message history (for 6 diversely-hosted accounts), write emails, etc., while offline, and don't have to provide Google access to my mail server. Etc..

Maybe there are good solutions to all of these problems? But I can't go changing all of my habits every time someone tells me "there's a new way!" -- I have work to do. Generally when I try, I get burned and have to change back.

Addendum -- I'm a technical user. I'm not completely ignorant of the possibilities. So take my reluctance to change, and multiply that by some large factor for everyone who finally got the hang of using Skype to keep in touch with their family overseas....

[immediate edit: I do know that some of these problems are solved; but I need all of them, or something so much better to my general workflow that it's worth the effort to switch and lose whatever I'm losing.]

I hadn't considered the limitations of "you have to have the browser open" as my browser is never closed.

You're right in that some of the problems are solved (I get native notifications of new email in Gmail via Web Notifications and a Chrome plugin that turns them in inotify (or whatever) notifications, and the indicator on my app'd tab in Chrome changes from zero -> one).

I do appreciate the feedback, these were conditions I hadn't even considered and need to account for.

That 'almost' is a lot bigger than you're making it out to be.

With a hypothetical "WebRTC video chat" service, in order to chat with "any of my facebook friends", I need to:

- Give all my data on my Facebook friends to the service in question. (Let's assume for the moment that it's a benevolent hypothetical chat service and I don't have to give up a lot) - Invite one of my friends. - Hope that my friend accepts the service accessing their information in the same way (A very big hurdle if it's a service they've never heard of)

Or I could just use Skype, that they're already on.

... It's still a wash in my opinion. There's no account required at all for a WebRTC application. I can send you a link on any service and you're a click away from video chatting with me. The Social Auth integration was just an example of how easy it would be to build off of existing user bases.

Grandparents probably don't note this difference. Skype is decidedly most popular by faraway folks keeping touch, particularly those that aren't terribly computer-savvy.

Grandparents have to be the most likely to understand or benefit from this difference.

Grandma, open the email I sent you and click the link [or] Grandma, Go to "tinyurl.com/5yp7q".

versus,

Grandma, download Skype, find it, run it, walk through the Installer, make an account, login, add my username, then call me. (and even then, this is glossing over a gross number of details that are hard for the unsavvy).

Even if it's already set up, there's no barrier to use of a simple WebRTC-based service assuming it's done correctly.

No; Grandma already has Skype installed & linked to your usernames, because you (or some other relative) did that for her. Probably at the same time you bought her a laptop.

So it's just ring ring "hello?"

Vs. sending an email to tell her to click this link so that you can call her....

If she knows to wake the computer up (or start it up) during your evening hours, that's enough -- Skype starts when the computer starts, unlike a browser.

Skype is easier than email, generally (and Grandma may not bother with email...). You don't even need typing skills. Just click the "answer" button when it rings, or if you want to call me, click my name then click "call".

That's how I set it up for my wife's parents, since 2006 - a not very cheap laptop back then, still works fine (had to be Windows XP). Works good 6 years later.

Then my father, became computer geek late in his years, and I can't even stop his mouth when comes to applications :) - He's bigger kid than me in that respect...

And even further...I bet many in this situation do some sort of Skype lesson during holiday visits.

Granted, I agree with the grandparent here: ultimately, browser-based software would be easier, but you have an entrenched user base who aren't likely to quickly change to new tech.

Everyone already has Skype. That hurdle was overcome a long, long time ago. Skype is an application that is just as ubiquitous as the web browser these days.