BifrostX: A Competition To Zoom?
The founders believe that BifrostX is a perfect alternative to Zoom that sits in perfect sync with the PM's call that mentions 'Vocal for Local'. Yet how is it ensuring the safety of the users?
While remote working has become the new normal, the use of video conferencing tools have become a necessity more than a luxury. A young and dynamic startup based out of West Bengal has developed a new and pocket-friendly web-based video conferencing app called BifrostX.
This app allows a person to connect with numerous number of participation, and lets a person share videos, files, photos and allows screen sharing. What about the security measures but? The founders believe that BifrostX is absolutely secure since it uses the WebRTC, an acronym for Web Real-Time Communication that allows only the attendees to communicate with each other and also restricts the entry of forced third entry. Additionally, the system also secures data transfers that are made on a single call.
Creator of the app Amlan Das Karmakar, shares his bit.
How is BifrostX competing with Zoom, especially at a time when Zoom has presented such impeccable downloads?
Our focus is currently only on trying to develop and sustain a safe and strong platform to connect people. Through BifrostX, we are giving people the freedom to connect with each other without having to deal with any kind of interference of a server in the middle. It’s all happening in the browsers.
Recently, Zoom had found itself amid controversies regarding cyber threats. How would you address that if there’s something similar your way?
At BifrostX, we are not handling any kind of user data. Therefore, there is zero possibility of such incidents/controversies. To simply explain, BifrostX is like a park where many people come and meet each other. It’s where you meet people and share your business card. It’s like that. BifrostX is just letting your browser share your connection data to another browser that wants to talk to you. And once it’s done, you are connected independently. It’s as simple as that. In WebRTC, this is called the signalling phase. BifrostX incorporates signalling servers powered by itself to transfer ICE candidates between browsers. Even in this phase, we are not making any of your data available to the public.
How are you ensuring that a user’s privacy isn’t violated?
As mentioned earlier, BifrostX does not handle any user’s content except for the signalling part to connect the users. And to be honest, we haven’t even incorporated anything in our server that is even capable of interfering with shared user data. In a nutshell, we actually don’t have a hardware or a system to do that. Once a RTCPeerConnection instance successfully connects two end-points, then the connected browsers are in their complete freedom. And even if somebody bombards the servers at BifrostX at that time, the connection will still continue; the conference will go on. Even the videos, images and files transferred through BifrostX are simply utilizing Data Channels in WebRTC. So, in this case as well, we are not receiving the user’s data. These transfers are done through using the DTLS encryption, which is by default active in any WebRTC supported browser and it is as secure as an SSL encrypted HTTPS connection. So yes, we take security very seriously and guarantee the best practices.
Could you give us a download of your features in detail?
BifrostX currently supports the following features:
1. Multi-user video conferencing on ‘Mesh’ or ‘Star’ type room configuration.
2. Ability to control video bitrate to save data (currently accepted in Firefox only)
3. Screen sharing
4. Realtime chatting
5. Sharing Youtube/Vimeo Video links in embedded form
6. Sharing of local images in embedded form
7. Sharing of any kind of file (upto 100MB) and allowing connected peers to download it
8. Dark mode
9. Administrative Ability to Mute and Hide others
10. User’s ability to Mute/Unmute and Hide/Unhide himself/herself
11. User verification programme to enable Verified badge on their accounts
Besides these, we are also working on some more features such as:
1. Introducing a new Webinar Mode
2. Multiplayer Gaming
3. Conference Recording
4. Conference Broadcasting/Streaming in Real Time
Where do you see yourself and BifrostX 3 years from now?
Technology is getting enhanced every single day and so, we will continue to work on bringing more advancements at BifrostX. The aim will be to grow and keep in with the times along with my team members Prasanta Sarkar (Director and Founder of Bengal Web Solution) and Baisakhi Bhattacharya (Co-founder and Digital Marketing Head), who helped with the application.
Safety and security will continue to be BifrostX’s number one priority. And regarding its future, I can only say – it’s packed with the best of surprises; and even after 3 years, I can see myself working on its enhancements.
