They have nat-free servers and their own automatic nat-traversal methods. Even if every single browser supports VOIP, you won't be able to use it between 2 random people using standard home connection. Until we get out of the lack of IPv4 addresses situation there can be no true peer to peer network.
I assumed P2P, since Joeboy mentioned "no problem, just go to this URL...". If you're not doing this in a P2P way, then you need an account with third party and the third party sometimes needs to transfer both your signalling and your audio. That means they need to get money for that from somewhere...
In that case you're pretty much in the same position as with Skype - just without a download. Account, configuration, potential payments, etc. remain.
Edit: Actually now I see a solution - if only one person had an account, this would still be possible and he could start a call by sending some URL. So for the other person this is "just go to this URL". Unfortunately we still need a third party to handle the traffic unless you require the account holder to ensure their network is capable of acting as a server.
I don't understand why. I'm not a networking expert but I have some experience with networking... I mean, I've already tried a proof-of-concept out with a computer behind a NAT router and it worked fine.
Think about 2 devices (A,B) behind routers in different networks. Connections from A end up on B's router since there's no existing connection to match and connections from B end up on A's router. Unless you explicitly configure port forwarding B will never know that A is calling him.
Yeah - that will do, but the TURN operator is a third party. I commented about the situation assuming Joeboy meant P2P connection without Skype or anyone else Skype-like (the URL is the only thing needed). If you're ok with someone else providing TURN and making money on it in some way to pay for the bandwidth, then yeah - that's enough.
I'll be honest, I'm currently abusing the STUN servers that Google uses in their own WebRTC examples and will need to evaluate my own options. I was under the impression that STUN could be used to establish a connection that from then forward was able to be only peer to peer after the connection through the NAT had been established.
