For those who don’t know, SDP is an old school standards-based text format (pre-1998) for describing media, codecs, state and networking information offered by devices for use in real-time communications and more recently as the proposed format for with WebRTC. I’ve written in the past about my disdain for SDP. To me, using SDP inside the browser for WebRTC seems akin to requiring all new computers use the graphics processing unit from the Commodore 64 for all future graphics engines. As cool as it might have been in its day, it is not exactly up to the task anymore and should be left to the realm of nostalgia.

It seems the idea for using SDP from within WebRTC was to allow SIP vendors to take SDP from their devices and shove it into the browsers and immediately be able to communicate between browsers and SIP devices and to offer the JavaScript guys a simple API to program against. Sounds great, right?  Wrong.  The browser’s SDP and the SIP device SDP is already diverging in their compatibility. Be it Trickle ICE, CODECS, security, or newly proposed “features”, realistically few SIP devices are going to be compatible out of the box or remain compatible for long using SDP. Likewise, providing a simple API for JavaScript developers could have been accomplished by providing a JavaScript library, similar to the way jQuery works to abstract and simplify DOM manipulation (and many other things). In other words, the primary reasons for using SDP in the browser are negated.

My original thinking was that the SIP guys would really love SDP in the browser since SDP is the primary media description format they use. But I must recast my opinion to say it’s really bad for the SIP folks as well. Here’s why…

• An increasing need for Session Border Controllers: As it stands, the SDP that comes from SIP devices will need to be re-written and perhaps even put through some kind of Session Border Controller (SBC)/Proxy to maintain compatibility. SIP devices could face update cycles tied to browser updates. There are some companies in the industry who sell proxies that would greatly benefit from compatibility issues (as their role is to fix them) but I would hate to think that the IETF/W3C has been usurped by those vendors to push a solution that is not to benefit the entire internet industry and end users.
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• SIP feature-creep: One thing I do know about SIP vendors is they love to add their own extensions to SIP to add their favourite competitive features they offer with their devices/networks. This allows them to claim “support” for something their competition does not support. To that end, I’ve noticed a continuous stream of feature requests to the browser vendors from the SIP world (and I’m certain the alignment to a SIP vendor’s own preferred feature is pure coincidence).

All the demands being put onto the browser vendors to add feature after feature truly scares me. As I foresaw, the innovation of features is tied to the release cycle of each browser binary being built, upgraded and rolled out to end users on each platform. Instead of features being added by by the programming language available inside the browser (JavaScript) which is dynamically updatable, features are now going to have to crammed into the browser binary because of modifications required to the SDP. What could have been simple change in JavaScript on a webpage is now tied by the innovation curve of the IETF/W3C tracks and each browser implementing these features equally across all platforms (and let’s not forget to including mobile in that list).

The irony is that if the SIP vendors had insisted that the browsers only offer a good core media/RTC engine, they could have implemented many of the features they now demand from the browsers vendors themselves without waiting for Google, Mozilla, Opera, Microsoft and Apple and the rest of the industry to agree. Talk about a SIP vendor’s dream in being able to offer some unique feature for their network! But now they have to wait and wait and hope and whatever ends up being released in the browsers will work for them and not introduce even more problems and incompatibilities to their networks.

Browser vendors will become the choke-point.

Worse, browsers vendors will be reluctant and cautious to change SDP for fear of “breaking things” within existing networks if the SDP / WebRTC becomes used broadly. If SIP vendors could understand that writing SDP in the JavaScript layer was in their own best interest, they would get behind the idea of dropping SDP entirely from the browser layer and instead agree to generate their network compatible SDP from within the JavaScript layer exclusively.

Microsoft argued so strongly against SDP and offer/answer, they have not agreed to support WebRTC and instead produced a competing specification called CU-RTCWeb. Their proposal starts from the premise of having a good media engine/RTC controllable at a lower layer would be far better for the industry and they have (so far) not released their Internet Explorer browser with WebRTC support. Whatever your feelings about Microsoft or their particulars of their proposal, they are right about SDP offer/answer and without their market share being onboard, it will hurt WebRTC’s adoption rate, especially in the Enterprise. Apple is sitting on the sidelines giving no indication their position while the industry sorts this out. I’d love nothing more for the industry than to have all vendors on the same page and agree to implement “something” usable, but it seems the SDP offer/answer model is not helping and in fact hindering that effort.

Where do we go from here?

As much as I hate to say it, I think we need to hold off on releasing WebRTC as it is until we have a lower level API. SDP offer/answer is not going to cut it for the initial release, this first version of the standard needs to live on for at least a few years. We must deprecate the current WebRTC API in favour of a more suitable low-level replacement API. The revision should focus instead on the extensions that can be added in the JavaScript layer and only put the necessary hooks in the browser at the most basic level for a media and RTC engine to be controlled. Let’s not hamper innovation!

If we need compatibility with the current WebRTC API it would be easy to create a JavaScript shim that supports the current API and allows a more long innovative approach. If there is interest in creating such a shim, I would be more than happy to be part of that development effort.

Cross-posted to IETF RTCWEB Mail list

Written by Robin Raymond
Edited by: Erik Lagerway