Up to this point, we have focused solely on the audio and video capabilities of WebRTC. However, there is an entire subject that we have not even started to talk about— arbitrary data. It turns out that WebRTC is good at transferring data; not just audio and video streams, but any data we might have.
In this chapter, we are going to cover the WebRTC Data Channel Protocol and how it can be utilized in our communication application. Over the course of this chapter, we will cover the following topics:
How the data channel fits into the WebRTC puzzle
How to create a data channel object from a peer connection
What are the encryption and security concerns
What are the potential use cases for the data channel