> The tradeoff makes sense mostly for many-party calls - for a 1:1 call sending multiple resolutions is a waste, but for a many participant call the downlink bandwidth usage becomes much larger than the uplink.

Excellent insight, thanks.

> You layer idea is called SVC and is mentioned in the article. But VP8 doesn't support it, it is waiting on them to upgrade to VP9 or AV1.

Thanks. I noticed SVC in the article but somehow overlooked that detail.