Re: [rtcweb] Proposal for PeerConnection cloning

[Christer Holmberg <[e-mail]>]

Hi,

>>> If you want to support the usecase I suggested, where a single offer 
>>> can result in parallel forking, but where you don't want to lock down 
>>> to a single answerer: then you obviously need to support forking, and 
>>> likely you need/want to support it irrespective of the 'final' state of the original PeerConnection.  You *can* require cloning before the final answer is applied, though I would argue that you don't gain much by doing so.
>>>
>>> So this is the usecase: you send a single offer (say to a conference 
>>> server controller, or to a game server) and you get a separate answer 
>>> from each other endpoint, such as in a mesh conference, or who are in 
>>> the same 'area' of the game, or in hearing (at that moment) in a VR environment.  You might get these answers well after the initial answer or burst of answers.
>> Yes. And, my idea would be that each of those answers are provided to the browser as PRE_ANSWERS.
>>
>> Then, at some point, you decide that you are not going to accept any more answers, and you provide an ANSWER to one of the (C)PCs, which will release all other associated (C)PCs.
>
> Sorry, I think you missed the point: the application wants to end up with N connected, active PeerConnections, not one.  This is a 
> mesh conference (for example), not a central-mixer conference.  And for added fun, we don't necessarily know there won't be more 
> coming later, perhaps much later (but that's a possibly-separable feature).

Speaking in SIP terms, I don't think it is possible to implement mesh conference that way, because clients will normally, once they've received one 200 OK, ACK+BYE any additional ones. Or, a forking proxy will CANCEL all other forked legs once a 200 OK has been forwarded on one of them.

Regards,

Christer