SFU vs. MCU Architectures
Understand the differences between Selective Forwarding Units (SFU) and Multipoint Control Units (MCU) for multi-party WebRTC calls.
Scaling Multi-Party Calls
Imagine a video call with many people. How do all their video and audio streams connect efficiently? Direct peer-to-peer connections, common in 1-on-1 WebRTC, become complex and inefficient for larger groups.
This lesson explores two main server-side architectures for scaling multi-party calls: MCU and SFU.
Introducing the MCU
MCU stands for Multipoint Control Unit. Think of an MCU as a central 'mixer' for all participants' media streams.
In an MCU architecture, every participant sends their individual audio and video stream to a central server.
All lessons in this course
- SFU vs. MCU Architectures
- Load Balancing Signaling Servers
- Distributed STUN/TURN Services
- Cascading SFUs for Geographic Scale