"Peer connection failed" on camera broadcast Resolved
What was happening
After Chrome 127 shipped in mid-August 2024, users on Chromium-based browsers (Chrome, Edge, Opera, Brave) started seeing a "peer connection failed" error whenever they tried to broadcast their camera. This was not an account issue or a settings problem — it affected everyone on those browsers equally.
The root cause was a change in Chrome 127 that broke the WebRTC peer negotiation icanhazchat's streaming layer relies on. The Wowza infrastructure the site uses was affected; their team published an incident report at the time.
The temporary fix (at the time)
While waiting on the site to patch things on their end, I put together a Chrome extension called ICHC Peer Fix that worked around the issue. It's no longer needed for this specific problem, but the newer icanhazbetter extension supersedes it with a broader set of improvements.
What browsers were affected
Chrome 127+, Microsoft Edge (Chromium), Opera, and Brave — anything running on the Chromium 127 engine. Firefox was not affected. Safari was not affected.
Current status
Fixed. The site owner resolved the issue on their end. If you're still seeing peer connection errors, it's most likely an unrelated cause — check your browser permissions for camera access, or try a hard refresh.