Demo: Velox: Enhancing P2P Real-Time Communication in Browsers

Peer-to-peer (P2P) real-time communication is a fundamental building block for modern pervasive systems and applications, to name a few, mobile edge clouds, device-to-device coordination, and intelligent transportation. This paper introduces Velox, a suite of tools to enhance P2P real-time communication in browsers. It consists of a customized JavaScript compiler, a control room for managing peer connections and tracking resources using the WebSocket protocol, and clientside scripts for maintaining P2P communication channels using WebRTC and fetching necessary resources and contents. Two design priorities of our design are extensibility and ease of adoption. First, our tools are modular so that each component can be easily replaced and extended without touching other parts. Hence, others can build on top of Velox by only modifying the critical component(s). Second, we choose to develop our tools such that they work directly in web browsers. Browsers run smoothly on most personal computing devices; hence, a direct support for browsers will make the adoption and development simpler. Finally, we discuss our plan to demonstrate a P2P caching application using Velox to showcase the effectiveness and functionalities of our tools. In particular, a client can fetch resources cached at other neers.