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FREEHOP / COMMS LAB

Inspect a real session.

GitHub Pages serves this static page. Freehop's client runs in your browser, with no Freehop call backend. Two public WebTorrent trackers act as the gates and public STUN servers help each browser find its address. The audio and video travel between machines in the call. The live steps below explain how they connect.

Loading the call…

What to expect

  • The room code sits in the link after the # sign. Browsers never send that part to a web server.
  • The code is the room secret: anyone with the link can join, so share it only with people you want in the call.
  • Use small rooms (2 to 8 people) for this demo. Eight is the initial target, not a benchmarked capacity limit. It has no room-size admission control; larger rooms can leave some people disconnected. Each pair shows the path it took: direct, gateway, relay, bridged or unreachable.
  • Without desktop gateways or a host node in this room, two browsers behind strict NATs or UDP-blocking networks may stay unreachable. That is the honest boundary of a browser-only call.
  • If a browser blocks incoming sound, use Enable sound on that person's tile. Incoming audio packets and sound playback are shown separately: packets arriving does not prove your speakers are playing them. If playback is on but you hear nothing, check the browser tab's mute setting, your output device and the other person's microphone.

Privacy and availability

  • Direct connections expose your network address to the other participants; this demo does not hide IP addresses.
  • The public trackers (tracker.openwebtorrent.com and tracker.webtorrent.dev) and the STUN servers are run by third parties. They see connection metadata, never your media. Freehop seals every signalling message so the trackers cannot read it.
  • Public trackers can be slow, full or unreachable from some networks. When they are, peers cannot find each other.
  • Freehop is alpha software, provided as is, without warranty of any kind. You use it at your own risk. License and disclaimer.