Liquid stream processing across web browsers and web servers

Abstract

The recently proposed API definition WebRTC introduced peer-to-peer real time communication between Web browsers, allowing streaming systems to be deployed on browsers in addition to traditional server-side execution environments. While streaming applications can be adapted to run on Web browsers, it remains difficult to deal with temporary disconnections, energy consumption on mobile devices and a potentially very large number of heterogeneous peers that join and leave the execution environment affecting the quality of the stream. In this paper we present the decentralized control approach followed by the Web Liquid Streams (WLS) framework, a novel framework for streaming applications running on Web browsers, Web servers and smart devices. Given the heterogeneity of the deployment environment and the volatility of Web browsers, we implemented a control infrastructure which is able to take operator migration decisions keeping into account the deployment constraints and the unpredictable workload.