# Scalable Video Conferencing Using SDN Principles

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.11649 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.11649/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 14 Mar 2025.

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Coordinated Networking for On-Device Agent-Augmented Real-Time Communication](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.22854/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Video-conferencing applications face an unwavering surge in traffic, stressing their underlying infrastructure in unprecedented ways. This paper rethinks the key building block for conferencing infrastructures -- selective forwarding units (SFUs). SFUs relay and adapt media streams between participants and, today, run in software on general-purpose servers. Our main insight, discerned from dissecting the operation of production SFU servers, is that SFUs largely mimic traditional packet-processing operations such as dropping and forwarding. Guided by this, we present Scallop, an SDN-inspired SFU that decouples video-conferencing applications into a hardware-based data plane for latency-sensitive and frequent media operations, and a software control plane for the (infrequent) remaining tasks, such as analyzing feedback signals. Our Tofino-based implementation fully supports WebRTC and delivers 7-210 times improved scaling over a 32-core commodity server, while reaping performance improvements by cutting forwarding-induced latency by 26 times.