The RTCDataChannel object

Now that we understand the underlying technologies at play, we can start learning how the actual RTCDataChannel object API works. The great thing is that this API is much less complex than the underlying workings of the SCTP. The main function to create a channel comes from an already established RTCPeerConnection object:

var peerConnection = new RTCPeerConnection();

// Establish your peer connection using signaling here

var dataChannel = peerConnection.createDataChannel("myLabel", dataChannelOptions);

This is all you need to get started! The WebRTC API will take care of everything else on the browser's internal layer. This will all happen once signaling has been performed and the connection has been established. You can create a data channel at any point in the process until the RTCPeerConnection object is closed. Though it is closed, it will throw an error when trying to create a new channel.

There are a number of states that a data channel can be in:

• connecting...