I've have asked these questions before with no proper answer. I hope I'll get some response here.
I'm developing an instant messenger in python and I'd like to handle video/audio streaming with VLC. Tha basic idea right now is that in each IM client I'm running one VLC instance that acts as a server that streams to all the users I want, and another VLC instance that's a client and recieves and displays all the streams that other users are sending to me. As you can see, it's kind of a P2P connection and I am having lots of problems.
My first problem was VLC can handle only one stream per port, but I solved this using VLM, the Videolan Manager which allows multiple streams with one instance and on one port.
My second problem was this kind of P2P take has several drawbacks as if someone is behind NAT or a router, you have to do manual configurations to forward the packages from the router to your PC, and it also has another drawback, you can only forward to 1 PC, so you would be able to use the program in only one workstation.
Also, the streams were transported in HTTP protocol, which uses TCP and it's pretty slow. When I tried to do the same with RTSP, I wasn't able to get the stream outside my private LAN.
So, this P2P take is very unlikely to be implemented successfully by an amateur like me, as it has all the typical NAT traversal problems, things that I don't want to mess with as this is not a commercial application, just a school project I must finish in order to graduate as a technician. Finally, I've been recommended to a use a server in a well known IP and that would solve the problem, only one router configuration and let both ends of the conversations be clients. I have no idea how to implement this idea, please any help is useful. Thanks in advance. Sorry for any error, I am not a programming/networking expert nor am I an english-speaking person.