Re: [rtcweb] CNAMEs and multiple peer connections

[Magnus Westerlund <[e-mail]>]

On 2014-03-13 17:53, Martin Thomson wrote:
> On 12 March 2014 01:29, Magnus Westerlund
> <[e-mail]> wrote:
>> I like to point out that the agreement and what is documented in
>> rtp-usage is that WebRTC endpoint will have to make forwarded streams
>> appear as locally originated. However, this as currently written does
>> not apply to RTP middleboxes that interconnects multiple PeerConnections
>> to form a multi-party session. This is deliberate to ensure that RTP
>> topologies like RTP mixer and SFM do work on the RTP/RTCP level.
> 
> I'm still not clear on whether a middlebox interoperating with a
> WebRTC endpoint is obligated to respect these rules or not.  I had
> assumed that WebRTC is such a bully that they would be forced to.

Well, I know Colin and I did put in quite some thought to make the
WebRTC RTP usage rules such that you can use the common RTP middleboxes
as long as you have the right front-end, i.e. DTLS-SRTP and signalling
translation.

> 
>> I am especially interested to know how you will "easy to apply manually"
>> the synchronization. Can you please describe that. Because, that either
>> requires an API call to tell the media framework, please consider the
>> following CNAMES as equivalent, or some other method of telling the
>> media framework that these different MST are actually originating from a
>> common clock base.
> In WebRTC, this would be:
> 
> var audio = pc1.getRemoteStreams()[0].getAudioTracks()[0];
> var video = pc2.getRemoteStreams()[0].getVideoTracks()[0];
> var synchronizedStream = new MediaStream(audio, video);
> 
> We'd have to say that this implies a statement about the clock base of
> the tracks being the same.  ... and that this statement could be
> wrong.

I think this looks dangerous. If you default the assumption that
different CNAMEs of the MST you add are actually sharing clock base,
then a lot of basic programs that may group MST from different PCs into
one MS for convenience are going to cause serious issue in the media
frameworks, when they attempt to synchronize things.

> 
> As far as it goes, I'm sure that other systems could build a similar
> function, but none of those are standardized.
> 
>> I protested about this, not to lower the users privacy, but over the
>> concern that this was raised without providing a case where it was
>> obvious that the user's privacy was impacted. Martin, you said that you
>> would think about it, and the next statement was lets change it, without
>> providing any motivation why the concern was significant.
> 
> I'm sorry about that, I thought about it, but didn't want to waste
> everyone's time (mine included) with an essay on the subject.
> 

Having considered this a bit more, I do think the risk to privacy out
weighs the other concerns, as long as the API and its handling can be
sorted out, I don't think the above is sufficient to get good
functionality.

My understanding is that the risk to privacy exist when one have one JS
application enabling communication in different contexts during the same
application session. In cases where there might be participants in the
different contexts that could link the same end-point and thus human
user to different participant IDs (that otherwise are anonymous). Thus
revealing privacy concerns. As it would take the application designer to
take this risk into consideration to avoid it, I feel safer if the
application designer would need to take active measurements to perform
linkage.

I will wait an see if there are other inputs on this within the next
week. If nothing arises I will propose a text change to the rtp-usage to
address this.

Cheers

Magnus Westerlund
(As individual)

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