WebRTC depends on some message transport (using http) existing first between peers before the data channel can be established . That's far from equivalent capability to direct sockets.
Yes, you do need a connection establishment server, but in most cases traffic can flow directly between peers after connection establishment. The reality of the modern internet is even with native sockets many if not most peers will not be able to establish a direct peer-to-peer connection without the involvement of a connection establishment server anyway due to firewalls, NAT, etc. So it's not as big of a downgrade as you might think.
That changed (ahm.. will change) with ipv6. I was surprised to see that I can reach residential ipv6 lan hosts directly from the server. No firewalls, no nat. This remains true even with abusive isps that only give out /64 blocks.
That said, I agree that peer to peer will never be seemless thanks mostly to said abusive isps.
I sure hope not, this will bring in a new era for internet worms.
If some ISPs are not currently firewalling all incoming IPv6 connections, it's a major security risk. I hope some security researcher raises boise about that soon, and the firewalls will go closed by default.
My home router seems to have a stateful firewall and so does my cellphone in tethering mode - I don't know whether that one's implemented on the phone (under my control) or the network.
Firewalling goes back in the control of the user in most cases - the other day we on IRC told someone how to unblock port 80 on their home router.
i don't think they scan the entire space. but even before that there were ones abusing bonjour/upnp which is what chrome will bring back with this feature.
IPv6 isn't going to happen. Most people's needs are met by NAT for clients and SNI routing for servers. We ran out of IPv4 addresses years ago. If it was actually a problem it would have happened then. It makes me said for the p2p internet but it's true.
It became a problem precisely the moment AWS starting charging for ipv4 addresses.
"IPv4 will cost our company X dollars in 2026, supporting IPv6 by 2026 will cost Y dollars, a Z% saving"
There's now a tangible motivator for various corporate systems to at least support ipv6 everywhere - which was the real ipv6 impediment.
Residential ISP appear to be very capable of moving to v6, there are lots of examples of that happening in their backends, and they've demonstrated already that they're plenty capable of giving end users boxes the just so happen to do ipv6.
"We are introducing a new charge for public IPv4 addresses. Effective February 1, 2024 there will be a charge of $0.005 per IP per hour for all public IPv4 addresses"
Is that a problem? Again, I'm talking about the scenario where you control both sides of the connection, not where you're trying to use UDP to communicate with a third party service.
