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Number of participants for group call is up to 8 for Whatsapp. Is group call P2P or through Whatsapp server like Zoom due to number of participants?

user215422
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The answer to your question can be found here: https://www.whatsapp.com/security/
Although it does not say it explicitly that it is not point-to-point. It can be inferred from the "Speak freely" and "Security by default" sections of that page where it says "WhatsApp calls are end-to-end encrypted so WhatsApp and third parties can't listen to them." Just so you don't get confused, End to End encryption does not mean Point to Point. Zoom is end-to-end encryption as well (although there are problems in the type of encryption they use).

Everything in Whatsapp utilizes a server. The amount of overhead that would occur if Whatsapp was P2P would be high. Also there will be very high CPu usage as there would be multiple encrypted connections happening simultaneously, which would mean high battery usage. Thus Whatsapp is not P2P but utilizes a server.

Amol Soneji
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  • "The amount of overhead that would occur if Whatsapp was P2P would be high." Why? It's literally the opposite. Whatsapp uses P2P for calls. – Allexj Jan 03 '22 at 11:50
  • While i agree it goes trough server (just because i will never trust facebook and greedy corps to miss out on a single bit of data), your statements about overhead of p2p are deceptive at best. P2P would be far simpler and add 0 overhead to whatsapp servers + encrypted connection is not a huge overhead to device itself, you are not going to run hours long calls, it does not matter how many connections, what matters is how much data you decrypt. Considering that modern iphones can edit 4k video, its hardly a trouble for them. Yes battery will be impacted, but very little. – vach Nov 27 '23 at 14:19