Meet the Packets: How audio travels into your browser - Sara Fecadu - JSConf US 2019

It's 2019, audio packets from streaming services are swirling all around us. Yet, as JavaScript enthusiasts, we are often so focused on the application layer that we miss out on all the quirks that exist in the layers below. Let's journey from the browser down to the physical layer (and back up) to see how a single audio file travels over the wires and into our lives. This talk will look at audio codecs, compression techniques, and the use of TCP congestion control algorithms (like BBR) to help manage packet loss.