--- title: "Questions we hear often · WebRTC Relay Server" description: "Whether you have to use our instance, whether it is only for Privatta, what the server sees, and what happens if nobody joins." url: "https://royalsoftworks.com/products/webrtc-relay-server/questions/" source: "https://royalsoftworks.com" format: "markdown" note: "Markdown rendering of the HTML page at `url`. Same content, same canonical URL." --- WebRTC Relay Server · 2 of 2 # Questions we hear often. Whether you have to use our instance, whether it is only for Privatta, what the server sees, and what happens if nobody joins. Frequently asked ## Questions we hear often. 01 Do I have to use Royal SoftWorks' hosted instance? No. WebRTC Relay Server is open source — audit the code, run your own instance, and point any client (including Privatta, via Settings) at it instead of the default. 02 Is this only useful for Privatta? No. It's a generic WebRTC signaling relay: mint a key, pair two peers, relay their handshake. Privatta is its first production user, not its only intended one — drop it in front of any WebRTC project that needs two peers to find each other. 03 What does the server actually see? SDP offers/answers and ICE candidates while a handshake is in progress — never the file or data transfer itself, which happens directly between the two peers once the connection is up. It logs no IP addresses, keys, or payloads: every log call passes a fixed event name, and errors are logged by class name, never by message. On our hosted instance, the hosting platform's own edge logs sit outside this code. 04 What happens if nobody joins? The room is deleted automatically 5 minutes after creation, whether or not a second peer ever showed up. Keys are single-use and are never revived or reissued. [Previous What it does](https://royalsoftworks.com/products/webrtc-relay-server/what-it-does/) [Back to WebRTC Relay Server overview](https://royalsoftworks.com/products/webrtc-relay-server/)