UvgComm: Open Software for Low-Latency Multi-party Video Communication

Abstract

Effective and smooth video communication has become an integral tool for interaction in our modern society. The well-known WebRTC project is optimized for server-based communication architectures with less stringent latency requirements. This paper introduces an open-source, peer-to-peer (P2P) mesh-based application called uvgComm 1.0 for low-latency multi-party video communication. Our experimental results show that uvgComm attains 25% lower latency than server-based solutions at 219 ms. In addition, it offers advanced privacy protection mechanisms with end-to-end encryption and P2P mesh topology that delivers media without any media servers. The ambitious goal of uvgComm is to take P2P mesh-based conferencing architecture to the next level and make this architecture a serious competitor to server-based communication architectures.