Which socket serverside software for video conferencing?

Question

I want to create a simple video conferencing site and at the beginning I have decided to use Microsoft's SignalR with Mono and apache. But there are some voices saying that SignalR is slow. And if that's true it might be even worst on Mono in linux.

That's why i decided to come here and seek your help. There are a few projects like:

 1. Microsoft's SignalR
 2. xSockets
 3. Microsoft.WebSocket
 4. SuperWebsocket

I would like to ask if any of you have any experience with this projects and could help me chose between them.

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Disclaimer: I work at XSockets.

I would use OHM's law in combination with what hosting you are planning. With XSockets and SuperWebSocket you will have support for full-duplex communication (websockets) on all server platforms.

SignalR and Microsoft.WebSockets require Win8+/2012 Server and IIS8 to be able to provide websockets on the server. If you use another platform you will get half-duplex techniques (SSE, Longpolling...) See supported platforms Maybe that is why you ask about SignalR being slow since you will run on Linux and that means that you will not get WebSocket-support from the server when using SignalR/Microsoft.WebSocket?

When it comes to implementation both SignalR and XSockets has implementations of WebRTC (I assume that it is WebRTC you are talking about event though you do not mention it). I have no idea if SuperWebSocket has any WebRTC samples, but you should be able to port the samples of SignalR and XSockets to SuperWebsocket if you want to.

When it comes to client support there is obviously the issue with IE, but Chrome, FF and Opera will support WebRTC in desktop. On mobile you will have support on Android, but on iOS you will need something like this Cordova lib It is tested with XSockets webrtc implementation, but I cant speak for others. Should work with the SignalR implementation as well, but we have not tried that.

So, IMHO you should choose between 1,2 and 4 depending on server platform and the implementation that suits your project the best.

Option 3 is probably not a good choice at all...

EDIT: A link to a WebRTC sample

Answer 2

Here is a project that uses SignalR for video conferencing.

Now, unless you provide the sources saying that SignalR is slow, I can't really have much to say, except that it depends on your scenario. Have a look at the introduction to SignalR and see if your project fits.

If you really want to use Mono and Apache, you will face some compatibility issues, since ASP.NET doesn't have a stable release on Linux, and SignalR will not make the first release of ASP.NET 5.

Unless there is no other option, I would go with IIS for hosting an ASP.NET application until Microsoft releases the cross-platform framework.

As of SigalR being slow, I really don't know what this is about (how many users, what is the behaviour of this 'slow', when sending, or when receiving messages?).

Hope this helps. Best of luck!

EDIT: Ok, have a look at this repo, give it a try and see if you have issues. As for the other technologies listed, I didn't work with them, so I can't really help you.