Provide a direct communication option for trusted users
Occasionally (maybe around 1-2 times per month) I will have voice or video calls seemingly "drop", where everyone is disconnected from the call at once. This level of uptime seems reasonable for what we are using as a free service, but it would be nice if there was an alternative.
According to a Discord blog post, Discord is using WebRTC as its underlying communication system. The post mentions that this is only used to communicate between the client and server, rather than the original peer-to-peer communication that WebRTC defines. The post mentions this is done so a user's IP address isn't leaked to other users that they are in a call with, which makes sense and definitely should be the default. In my case (I assume the same holds true for many), I typically only use Discord with a fairly small group of friends, all of whom I trust enough to give my IP address to. Based on this, my request is this:
Provide a means of marking other users/friends as "Trusted", where calls made between trusted users will first attempt to communicate without using Discord servers for audio/video data.
For small calls, I could see this implemented by just using WebRTC as it is defined, as peer-to-peer calling.
For larger calls where a mesh configuration starts to break down, perhaps users on desktop clients with good computers and connections could opt in to being the "host" of a call with other trusted users, or perhaps even all of the calls on a given server (if they are available). This (probably heavy) additional functionality could perhaps be bundled in a (potentially paid) separate client, that way most users don't need to deal with the larger program.
I see two primarily merits to implementing this feature:
- It can increase the reliability of the service. Small hiccups in the service aren't noticeable for normal messages and call initiation but can be quite jarring in voice or video calls. Providing a more direct communication option for users, with the normal servers as a backup, should be able to increase reliability.
- It could reduce the server load. Needing to host fewer streams is obviously valuable for Discord. Perhaps using this feature could be encouraged by unlocking higher video/audio quality tiers when the stream isn't being hosted by Discord.
Vui lòng đăng nhập để lại bình luận.
Bình luận
0 bình luận