USE Together, a WebRTC-Based Solution for Multi-user Presence Desktop

Abstract

Ubiquitous is one of the essential features of what should be the desktop of the future. In practice, this concept covers several issues related to multi-users collaboration, remote applications control or remote display and secure access over IP networks. With its standards and capabilities, WebRTC provides a new vision of real-time communications services that can raise these challenges. In this paper we present a WebRTC-based middleware solution for real-time multi-users remote collaboration. It allows a full desktop setup where everyone can see what other users are doing and where they position themselves in the shared workspace. In contrast to standard WebRTC’s Peer-to-Peer architecture, our system supports a synchronous communication model through a star topology. It also improves network bandwidth efficiency by using hardware video compression when the GPU resource is available, though assuring a very low latency streaming. In this way, we can maintain awareness and sense of presence without changing the usual practices of the users in front of a desktop. Several use cases are provided and a comparison of advantages and drawbacks of this solution is also presented to guide users in applying this technology under real-life conditions.