Web Real Time Communications (WebRTC) have become an essentiality for consumers and businesses alike. Various WebRTC companies are thriving to offer solutions which enables developers to integrate Video and group calling into websites and apps. TokBox, with their product OpenTok, is the leading name among the companies that operates a global WebRTC video platform.
About TokBox
TokBox is a Platform as a Service (PaaS) company that provides APIs, tools and hosted infrastructure required to develop WebRTC capabilities of enterprise-grade. TokBox is transforming the way of communication in the digital world. It is making this happen using their leading cloud platform, OpenTok, which enables integration of live video, voice and messaging functionality to your mobile apps and websites.
In October 2012, TokBox was acquired by an innovative, ambitious, global company, Telefonica Digital.
WebRTC
WebRTC is making the communications happen in real time. WebRTC is an API definition that is composed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). It supports browser-to-browser applications for video chat, video calling and file sharing without the requirement of either external or internal plugins. This browser-based real time communication, WebRTC, an open source project, was released by Google in May 2011.
Major components of WebRTC are:
getUserMedia: It allows a web browser to access the microphone and camera to capture media.
RTCPeerConnection: It helps in setting up audio/video calls.
RTCDataChannel1: It enables browsers to share data through peer-to-peer.
Advantages of using WebRTC:
- For end users of WebRTC, its advantage is that it is supported without any additional plug-ins or applications. WebRTC also enforces the usage of encryption for both the media and signalling. Thus, it provides a higher level of security than other currently available commercial telephony systems.
- For enterprises, it provides a cost-effective, rich, uninterrupted and secure experience of communication.
OpenTok
OpenTok is a global software platform that helps developers to incorporate live, group video call or chat directly into the existing web experience. It can be done in any manner which would make most sense to the web application. OpenTok was launched by Tokbox in November 2010.
OpenTok supports webRTC as well as Flash implementations, which is transparent to the developer. Flash was more ubiquitous than WebRTC until Mozilla’s introduction of WebRTC support in Firefox. But in today’s broad consumer market place, this scenario is changing rapidly. TokBox expects to support both platforms for the foreseeable future, but they are emphasizing on WebRTC expecting that it will supersede Flash completely.
The platform comprises an easy-to-use self-service API (available in JavaScript or Flash AS3) and a cloud infrastructure that provides routing, messaging and signal processing support.
Applications
OpenTok has transformed the traditional way of video conferencing by providing the developer with complete control over user experience and chat topology. The subscribe/publish model of OpenTok allows developers to implement group, one-on-one, one-many, random pairings, many-one and other different forms of chat. Having individual control over the sizing, layout and animation of individual video stream, will allow the video chat to be a native and completely integrated part of the web experience.
OpenTok is capable of providing all the things required to deploy scalable and bandwidth efficient WebRTC video communications for any business.
Krify has installed the OpenTok on their own server. The expert team of Krify has acquired competencies in building OpenTok powered real time communications app.
For more info about using OpenTok for WebRTC apps development, please follow our next blog at
https://krify.co/opentok-for-webrtc/
