WebRTC: The Journey From Browser Plugins to Thin Client Communications

Keith Griffin Ph.D Principal Engineer Office of CTO – Collaboration Technology Group

BRKCOL-2556 Agenda

• Introduction

• Our Journey to WebRTC

• Browser Plugins

• The End of The Beginning

• WebRTC as an Enterprise Media Termination Solution • WebRTC in Cisco Collaboration Products

• Demo’s

• State of the art and timing

• Summary

3 Introduction

4 About WebRTC

• What is WebRTC: • WebRTC is an API definition being drafted by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) • It is a free, open project that enables web browsers with Real-Time Communications (RTC) capabilities via simple JavaScript APIs • What is the merit of WebRTC: • WebRTC enables applications such as voice calling, video chat and P2P file sharing inside the browsers without plugins (or separate clients)

BRKCOL-2556 © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 5 Interactive Voice and Video in the Browser...

BRKCOL-2556 © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 6 But...

• Proprietary – no interoperability

• Requires 3rd party plugins

• Difficult to deploy (permissions, etc...)

• Not available on all platforms

• Needs to updated

BRKCOL-2556 © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 7 Browser Plugins for Media Termination

8 UC/Video has traditionally not been directly deployable in Browsers. Plugins and native apps fill these gaps

BRKCOL-2556 © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 9 And Mobile Browsers Are Not Extensible Native mobile apps are required

BRKCOL-2556 © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 10 The end of the beginning

Timelines to deprecate plugins: 2014-2016

11 Different Browsers, Different Plugins

• NPAPI – Netscape Plugin API • A cross platform browser plugin architecture in:

• Chrome “Today’s browsers are speedier, safer, and more capable than their ancestors. • Firefox Meanwhile, NPAPI’s 90s-era architecture has become a leading cause of hangs, crashes, security incidents, and code complexity. Because of this, Chrome will be • Safari phasing out NPAPI support over the coming year.” http://blog.chromium.org/2013/09/saying-goodbye-to-our-old-friend-npapi.html

• ActiveX • A browser plugin architecture created by Microsoft based on its COM (Common Object Model) and OLE (Object Linking and Embedding) technologies • Internet Explorer

Browser Plugin Technologies stem from developments in the mid-nineties

BRKCOL-2556 © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 12 Browser Market Share

Usage share of PC browsers for December 2016

Source Chrome IE Firefox Safari Edge Others NetMarketShare 56.43% 20.84% 12.22% 3.47% 5.33% 1.70% StatCounter 62.66% 9.86% 14.95% 5.1% 3.37% 4.06% W3Counter 56.6% 7.7% 11.1% 14.5% 2% 8.1%

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers

BRKCOL-2556 © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 13 WebRTC as a Media Termination Solution for Enterprise Collaboration

14 WebRTC: Web Real Time Communications Browser + Voice + Video + Data in Real Time

What WebRTC enables:

• Browsers with interactive voice and video communications

• Real time media and data directly between browsers

• Interoperability with existing voice and video systems

BRKCOL-2556 © 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 15 WebRTC in a HTML5 Context

SEMANTICS MEDIA & GRAPHICS

WebRTC RTCWeb