Zoom Technology
The Zoom client is a closed source application, which must be downloaded and installed prior to use. The video and audio streams are encrypted before being sent to Zoom’s Multipoint Control Unit (MCU) service, whereby the streams are analyzed to ensure synchronization with other participants before combining them to a single stream.
Zoom’s server includes Machine Learning technologies and applies them to the video streams to facilitate features such as Virtual Backgrounds. As both the client and server technologies are closed source, it is not possible to identify how streams are used or managed by Zoom Communications Inc. Since the data is only encrypted during transport to the servers but are accessible to Zoom’s technology within the server itself, it is unknown whether Zoom streams remain private.
Aircall Technology
Aircall uses WebRTC technology, which was first developed by Global IP Solutions (or GIPS), a company founded around 1999 in Sweden. In 2011 GIPS was acquired by Google and since then WeRTC is an open-source platform. Its source code is freely available and, therefore, easily scrutinized by third parties. Audio streams initiated within Aircall are encrypted both at the Internet level as well as within the audio packets themselves.
Once received by the Aircall servers, the audio format of the stream is converted to a format required for transportation along traditional telephony carrier lines and vice-versa. Beyond the format conversion and the WebRTC specific routines, no other transformations are applied.
Voice Throughput Comparison
WebRTC technology is updated regularly by numerous individuals and organizations, such as Microsoft, Apple, and Google. This results in all potential vulnerabilities being eradicated at the fastest possible time. In comparison, with Zoom being proprietary, any vulnerabilities are fixed only as and when Zoom Communications Inc. is made aware of them. This makes WebRTC particularly more reliable and potentially safer for end-users.
Additionally, tests have been carried out by VoIP professionals and have found WebRTC to be a strong contender to Zoom’s popularity.
For instance, when testing both platforms' ability to recover from changes in network bandwidth, the Jitsi Media Server team discovered WebRTC to respond on average twice as fast as Zoom.
Conclusion
While Zoom has proven to be a popular and capable tool for conferencing and online video calls, it’s used as a person-to-person communications platform that shows some limitations. For instance, since it requires all participants to use its proprietary software and to be connected to the Internet, it can be argued that Zoom doesn’t quite have the same reach as telephony-enabled platforms like Aircall.
What’s more, Aircall’s integration into numerous other business tools API configuration capabilities added benefits that facilitate users at the business level, creating much greater functionality beyond the communication features.
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