JVB 2.0: preparing our video router for the next 10 years of video conferencing
Today we’d like to share a very important milestone for the Jitsi project: we just finalized the first version of JVB 2.0, the evolution of our trusty Jitsi Videobridge.
What is the JVB? You may wonder. In the quest of building the ultimate Open Source video conferencing solution we built The Jitsi Videobridge, née JVB, our scalable video router and the brains of the operation.
As we prepare the JVB for the future of video conferencing, let’s take a step back and see where it all came from, shall we?
The JVB was introduced to the world as a standalone project in July 2012. Its roots, however, originate in the Jitsi desktop client, much earlier than that:
To put things into perspective, Google open sourced WebRTC in May 2011 and the first succesful WebRTC cross-browser call materialized on February 2013.
We have been very fortunate to have worked on the right building blocks and when WebRTC was unveiled we found ourselves at the forefront of the RTC ecosystem. It is our mission to remain in the vanguard of all things RTC.
Not all the glitter is gold, however. Many of the components used in the JVB are over a decade old, and it has started to show. Adding new features became harder due to the accumulated complexity and bugs and regressions started to be more frequent than we are comfortable with. It was time to pay the tech debt and make the JVB future proof.
After months of work (which we’ve been giving updates about in our community call) we are ready to release the Jitsi Videobridge 2.0, the JVB for the next 10 years. In this forum post Brian, our JVB 2.0 champion, outlines the technical changes as well as a short-term roadmap.
What does this mean for users? Nothing, business as usual, but expect new features more frequently now! What does this mean for developers? A better codebase to work on, with a better architecture, so making changes to it should have a lower barrier to entry.
Happy video conferencing!
❤️ – The Jitsi team.