[sp332]

Here's one of many things you won't learn in that class: NAT traversal http://www.h-online.com/security/features/How-Skype-Co-get-r... Not to mention tuning compression in real time for network properties, echo cancellation, audio/video synchronization, volume leveling, helping users find each other, and privacy settings. I've never done a streaming project and those are just the problems I can think of off the top of my head - I'm sure there are more interesting problems as well.

[tom_b]

All valid parts of the general problem, but I think most multimedia networking courses talk compression, QoS, jitter, adaptive protocols, etc . . .

While in no way attempting to say that these issues don't exist or are trivial, what I'm driving at here is that bi-directional video didn't spring fully formed out of the ether yesterday. I saw these issues as part of a multimedia networking course 10+ years ago.

Of course, there is also a ton of research still going on in this area, so it's not like the canonical answer has been found at this point either . . .

[anamax]

Yes, there are many problems/things one "should" know, but how many of them are essential for an MVP? More to the point, the fact that there are some "essential for MVP" things that you can't do doesn't mean that you shouldn't work on the "essential for MVP" stuff that you can do.

And then there's the "not product development" stuff.

There is always something that one can do to move forward.