IceLink is a client-side RTC stack that enables peer-to-peer communications on a variety of platforms. It requires an external signalling component, but aside from that, provides the core client media and network capabilities required for simple peer-to-peer based video between 2 or 3 parties.
LiveSwitch builds on this by adding signalling, security, scalability, recording, and POTS/PSTN interoperability. It includes a signalling gateway, complete with administrative control and reporting, a media server for scaling SFU-based and MCU-based streaming, and a SIP connector bridge for telephony integration. It supports simple peer-to-peer streaming, but is designed to scale to much larger sessions and can dynamically change connection type between P2P, SFU, or MCU during runtime.
LiveSwitch is required to support voice and video conferences where the number of participants exceeds what can be carried by a mesh (peer-to-peer) network. For typical mobile devices, this threshold is around 2-3 call participants, at which point packet forwarding (SFU) or packet mixing (MCU) by a media server, such as LiveSwitch, is required to reduce the resource drain on client devices.
No. LiveSwitch includes all the media and network capabilities of IceLink and all the signalling capabilities of WebSync. An application using IceLink and WebSync can be migrated to LiveSwitch to take advantage of the additional features.
No. You only ever pay the upfront fee once for yourself. You may distribute to as many third parties as you like. However, usage fees by these third parties will be added to your account.
Not at this time, although we are considering it for those who do not wish to deploy to their own servers, especially at startup.
Given how easy it is to provision servers in the cloud, you can reduce cost by running your own infrastructure and licensing LiveSwitch rather than paying for a third party PaaS platform. Using your own infrastructure also allows you to pass various regulatory and legal requirements (e.g. for data storage).
Frozen Mountain attempts to be fair to everyone. Our goal is to align our licensing, support, and maintenance costs to your revenue model as much as possible in order to create value-based pricing. By charging by either peak monthly concurrency or per minute, those who use the product extensively (and require more resources to support) pay more. If our pricing does not suit your particular revenue model, please feel free to contact us.
LiveSwitch is the underlying technology stack required to build and deploy a service or application like Skype or Facetime. The LiveSwitch package includes sample apps that demonstrate the use of the client API for building voice, video, and data calling and conferencing into your own application or service.
Yes, for peer-to-peer connections. For connections to the LiveSwitch media server, TURN is not required, although some Internet Service Providers have been known to inspect packets and interfere with real-time streaming media that does not run over TURN.
The LiveSwitch package includes a TURN server, but is also compatible with hosted solutions such as XirSys .
Absolutely. LiveSwitch has full support for sending and receiving text-based messages to a channel or to a specific user, device, or client.
Yes. LiveSwitch supports numerous browser platforms including Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari, and Internet Explorer. It also supports a wide range of native platforms including Android, iOS (Swift and Objective-C), macOS (Swift and Objective-C), .NET, Universal Windows Platform (UWP), Java (Windows, macOS, and Linux), and the Xamarin cross-platform development environment.
LiveSwitch supports the latest releases of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, and Xamarin. It also supports back to Internet Explorer 9, Android 4.4.4, iOS 8, macOS 10.10, Windows 7, .NET 3.5, and Java 6.
LiveSwitch supports the Opus, PCMU, and PCMA audio codecs, and the VP8, VP9, and H.264 video codecs.
Yes, with a few caveats for web browsers.
Chrome does not currently support changing the video source of an active connection, so currently, creating a new connection is the recommended approach. This also allows the audio/video stream from the device microphone/camera to remain active.
Chrome also requires an extension to be installed to enable screen sharing. The LiveSwitch package includes the code for this extension, which can be customized with your application name, logo, and contact information before uploading to the Chrome web store.
Firefox supports screen-sharing without an add-on. Safari and Edge do not currently support screen-sharing.
Yes. Although LiveSwitch does not have built-in support for capturing touch events, it can be used to stream touch or mouse coordinates which can be rendered on a canvas for real-time whiteboarding.
Yes, simply enable recording in your media server configuration.
Download a free trial of LiveSwitch or check out our online web demo at demo.liveswitch.fm . The LiveSwitch trial package includes an installer for the gateway, media server, and SIP connector, as well as example code for Android, iOS, .NET, and JavaScript. Examples for other platforms are coming soon!
Frozen Mountain appreciates customer feedback for new features. You can send feature requests to sales@frozenmountain.com or support@frozenmountain.com , or join the public community conversation at support.frozenmountain.com .
