Comment by fluoridation
5 days ago
>Ever tried to call someone over the internet? Well, now you need a publicly reachable device.
Uhh... Is this the '90s? People don't type in IP addresses (or phone numbers, back in the day) to connect with other people anymore. They connect to a common, publicly reachable server that deals with peers being behind NAT.
Most video calling software uses STUN NAT hole punching and not central relay servers. You are definitely publicly routed when you call through Google Meet or WhatsApp or FaceTime
https://atscaleconference.com/calling-relay-infrastructure-a...
if i read this right, whatsapp calls go thru relay servers?
To be fair, I think Google Meet with multiple participants still uses a relay server, instead of N^2 streams, but I may be wrong.
Now you've got significant additional latency, which is why this is very often not what actually occurs in these situations if it's at all avoidable.
It doesn't really matter. Any communications provider must keep call records for the FSB, so routing them through central servers and recording there is the only option anyway.
Of course it matters. STUN isn't theoretical, it's in actual, practical use across a great many things. There's plenty of things that aren't "calls" in a telecommunications sense. Discord, Telegram, Zoom, Slack, Jitsi, and far more. And there are plenty of other things entirely that use the same tactics to get direct peer-to-peer connections.
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May I introduce you to our Lord and Savior the Domain Name System.
How do you think this works, exactly?