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SignalR vs WebRTC: What are the differences?
What is SignalR? A new library for ASP.NET developers that makes developing real-time web functionality easy. SignalR allows bi-directional communication between server and client. Servers can now push content to connected clients instantly as it becomes available. SignalR supports Web Sockets, and falls back to other compatible techniques for older browsers. SignalR includes APIs for connection management (for instance, connect and disconnect events), grouping connections, and authorization.
What is WebRTC? *A free, open project that provides browsers and mobile applications with Real-Time Communications *. It is a free, open project that enables web browsers with Real-Time Communications (RTC) capabilities via simple JavaScript APIs. The WebRTC components have been optimized to best serve this purpose.
SignalR and WebRTC are primarily classified as "Realtime Backend / API" and "Web and Video Conferencing" tools respectively.
SignalR is an open source tool with 7.75K GitHub stars and 2.19K GitHub forks. Here's a link to SignalR's open source repository on GitHub.
Hello. So, I wanted to make a decision on whether to use WebRTC or Amazon Chime for a conference call (meeting). My plan is to build an app with features like video broadcasting, and the ability for all the participants to talk and chat. I have used Agora's web SDK for video broadcasting, and Socket.IO for chat features. As I read the comparison between Amazon Chime and WebRTC, it further intrigues me on what I should use given my scenario? Is there any way that so many related technologies could be a hindrance to the other? Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks. Ritwik Neema

I would recommend Amazon Chime. If I were you, I would eventually look into working with WebRTC as it is very interesting and teaches you a lot. I dove deep into webRTC recently building a webinar broadcasting application (one-to-many) and I can say it is difficult to understand how things actually work and to get it stable. I mean you can vaguely read up on it and get some things to work by copying code on StackOverflow or using a library but that wouldn't teach you much.
In short, go with Chime because it is easy to get started especially if you have a time constraint. But look into webRTC in the future as it enables you to build your own "Chime". Hope this helped!
Pros of SignalR
- Supports .NET server29
- Real-time21
- Free16
- Fallback to SSE, forever frame, long polling15
- WebSockets14
- Simple10
- JSON8
- Open source8
- Ease of use7
- Cool5
- Azure0
Pros of WebRTC
- OpenSource3
- No Download2
- You can write anything around it, because it's a protoc1
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Cons of SignalR
- Requires jQuery2
- Expertise hard to get2
- Weak iOS and Android support1
- Big differences between ASP.NET and Core versions1