It's worth noting that WebRTC still requires a server of SOME sort -- typically you want a "signaling" server, and you need at least a STUN server to pierce firewalls, though the latter can be found for free.

And some corporate networks are too restrictive to be pierced by STUN, which means you need a TURN server, which is a relay server.

But yes, 98% of the time, WebRTC can go directly browser to browser. As long as neither browser is Internet Explorer. Sigh.

These guys have an open source plugin that allows IE to join the webRTC party.

http://skylink.io/plugin/

This library they also have makes WebRTC cross browser compatible.

https://github.com/Temasys/AdapterJS

> As long as neither browser is Internet Explorer. Sigh.

If all popular torrent sites moved to in-browser downloads over WebRTC, virtually everybody would move away from IE :)

I never knew about STUN, this solves so many problems I've had. Thanks.

Is it even possible to open a socket from a browser to another browser directly? I was under the impression that was restricted for security reasons (websites becoming botnets and such).

I think you are correct, this appears to require a sever side element, I assume you don't have any real proof of deletion with something like this.

I have just written a library to make building something similar over webrtc easy: https://github.com/charlieschwabacher/ultrawave