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From their research paper at https://vuvuzela.io/static/vuvuzela.pdf:

> Vuvuzela can support 1 million users exchanging text messages (up to 240 bytes each) with an end-to-end latency of 37 seconds, achieving a throughput of 68,000 messages/sec.

Unfortunately, 37 seconds, even for a privacy-aware service, seems too slow to deliver instant messages.



While I agree that 37 seconds is slow enough to be noticeable in an intense conversation, I don't think it's a deal breaker.

I don't think all text messaging is equal. If you want a realtime conversation with someone, you probably want to just jump on a call with them anyway.

Furthermore, a system like this, with its extreme level of privacy (and the fact that you, at least at the moment, need a Go toolchain installed locally to even use it), seems to be tailored for a pretty specific kind of audience. That audience is the kind that values, and probably requires for their own personal safety, privacy above all else. 37 seconds of latency seems like a pretty reasonable trade off in that case.


Our latest paper, Karaoke, achieves 6.8 seconds with 2 million active users: https://vuvuzela.io/static/karaoke.pdf


cool! does (or will) the existing Vuvuzela client use Karaoke?


It doesn't yet. I'd like to integrate Karaoke's techniques into the Vuvuzela client in the coming months.


Huh? I think that's plenty enough for most use cases. Sure, sometimes I want text based realtime communications, so I can't have that, but most of the time it's just semi-realtime where this would be fine. But it has to scale to that point first I guess, and maybe things would already have been refined until then.




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