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| 1 | +# Help on Jitsi server |
| 2 | + |
| 3 | +## SCS Links |
| 4 | + |
| 5 | + * [Old SCS Website](https://scs.community/) |
| 6 | + * [New Forum SCS-Standards Website](https://sovereigncloudstack.org/) |
| 7 | + * [SCS Documentation](https://docs.scs.community/) |
| 8 | + * [SCS on github](https://github.com/SovereignCloudStack/) |
| 9 | + |
| 10 | +## SCS Jitsi Help |
| 11 | + |
| 12 | +### What? |
| 13 | + |
| 14 | +SCS runs its own Video Conference Server. |
| 15 | + |
| 16 | +It is a [Jitsi](https://jitsi.org/) instance run in a docker container in a VM sponsored by |
| 17 | +[Cleura](https://cleura.com) in its FRA datacenter. |
| 18 | +It is operated by the SCS community (SCS Project Board) and provides a solution |
| 19 | +without leaking data or metadata to outside parties. |
| 20 | + |
| 21 | +Jitsi has served us well, providing good quality and reliable VC service while allowing |
| 22 | +multiple screen shares and conferences with (at least) up to 50 video participants. |
| 23 | + |
| 24 | +### Where? |
| 25 | + |
| 26 | +The server provides its VC service on |
| 27 | +[https://conf.scs.koeln:8443/](https://conf.scs.koeln:8443/). |
| 28 | +The server uses [Let's Encrypt](letsencrypt.org) TLS certificates. |
| 29 | + |
| 30 | +### Usage |
| 31 | + |
| 32 | +You can access the service with your Web Browser (supporting [WebRTC](https://webrtc.org/)) |
| 33 | +or the Jitsi Meet App (Android, iOS). |
| 34 | + |
| 35 | +#### Login |
| 36 | + |
| 37 | +The meetings are free to be accessed by anyone that knows the room name, unless the |
| 38 | +moderator enables encryption and a password. |
| 39 | + |
| 40 | +To become a moderator, you need to have a login. Talk to [Kurt](https://scs.community/garloff). |
| 41 | +A moderator can open new rooms and change the room's settings. |
| 42 | + |
| 43 | +### Features |
| 44 | + |
| 45 | +#### Whiteboard and Etherpad |
| 46 | + |
| 47 | +The Jitsi instance has an etherpad and a whiteboard enabled. |
| 48 | +These tools can be used for collaborative creation and collection of content. |
| 49 | +Don't forget to save the contents to a persistent place after the meeting.</p> |
| 50 | + |
| 51 | +#### Codecs |
| 52 | + |
| 53 | +It is configured to prefer video codecs [AV1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AV1) |
| 54 | +over [VP9](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VP9) |
| 55 | +over [VP8](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VP8) |
| 56 | +over [H.264](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC). |
| 57 | +It prefers the [opus](https://opus-codec.org/) audio codec. |
| 58 | + |
| 59 | +These settings are chosen to provide good video and audio quality for clients |
| 60 | +with modern hardware at moderate bandwidth requirements. |
| 61 | +Clients can chose to use older codecs without impacting audio or video streams |
| 62 | +of others. |
| 63 | + |
| 64 | +### Dial-In |
| 65 | + |
| 66 | +We have an audio bridge using jigasi and [asterisk](https://www.asterisk.org/) |
| 67 | +connected to a [SIP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Session_Initiation_Protocol) provider. |
| 68 | +This allows a distrinct set of rooms to be provided with phone dial-in. |
| 69 | + |
| 70 | +Here's the setup: |
| 71 | + |
| 72 | +| Room Name | Dialin Suffix | |
| 73 | +| --------------- | ------------- | |
| 74 | +| SCS-Tech | 611 | |
| 75 | +| SCS-Governance | 612 | |
| 76 | +| Open-Operations | 613 | |
| 77 | +| SCS-OSISM | 614 | |
| 78 | +| SCS-Project | 615 | |
| 79 | +| SCS-Forum | 616 | |
| 80 | +| SCS-Kurt | 617 | |
| 81 | +| SCS-Taskforce | 618 | |
| 82 | +| SCS-ProjectTeam | 619 | |
| 83 | + |
| 84 | +Dial +49-221-292772-Suffix to connect. |
| 85 | + |
| 86 | +Rooms protected with a PIN would use 60x instead of 61x as suffix. |
| 87 | +Rooms with a three or four-digit number as room name would be connected to -61XXX or -61XXXX. |
| 88 | +Note that dial-in is not super-reliable due to occasional trouble with the SIP provider. |
| 89 | +So double-check ahead of important conference calls that require phone dial-in. Talk to Kurt |
| 90 | +to change room assignment or to resolve issues with the dial-in. |
| 91 | + |
| 92 | +### Browser hints |
| 93 | + |
| 94 | +Traditionally, the [blink](<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blink_(browser_engine)-based> |
| 95 | +browsers (like Google Chrome, Chromium, Edge, ...) support WebRTC best. |
| 96 | +Safari and Firefox do work.</p> |
| 97 | + |
| 98 | +#### Firefox and VP9 / AV1 |
| 99 | + |
| 100 | +On [Firefox](https://www.mozilla.org), in `about:config`, |
| 101 | +you can enable `media.peerconnection.video.vp9_preferred` and |
| 102 | +`media.webrtc.simulcast.vp9.enabled` for using VP9 video codec (which is better than VP8). |
| 103 | + |
| 104 | +By enabling experimental `media.webrtc.codec.video.av1.experimental_preferred` you even get AV1 |
| 105 | +(which is even better) in Firefox 139+. Depending on whether your hardware has hardware support for VP9 |
| 106 | +or AV1 encoding support and on whether that is exposed by your graphics driver stack, this may or may |
| 107 | +not create high CPU usage which you may not consider welcome as mobile user. |
| 108 | + |
| 109 | +### Limitations |
| 110 | + |
| 111 | +#### Firewalls blocking UDP |
| 112 | + |
| 113 | +While the web interface uses https (port 8443) which most firewalls find acceptable, the audio and |
| 114 | +video is transmitted via UDP (port 10000+). Some corporate and most public sector firewalls believe |
| 115 | +that outgoing(!) UDP traffic is dangerous and needs to be intercepted. This means that our Jitsi |
| 116 | +setup will not work for them. (We do not currently have a [COTURN](https://github.com/coturn/coturn) |
| 117 | +server to work around.) |
| 118 | + |
| 119 | +#### Large conferences |
| 120 | + |
| 121 | +For large conferences, it is recommended that participants stay muted and raise their hand |
| 122 | +in order to talk, so a moderator can ensure a somewhat structured discussion. While Jitsi can route |
| 123 | +a few dozens of video streams without trouble, the combines bandwidth may become a challenge for |
| 124 | +some of the participants and it is recommended to only switch on videos for the active participants. |
| 125 | +We have not tested much above 50 participants in the SCS community, so we don't know the precise limits |
| 126 | +of the server connection or capacity we use. |
| 127 | + |
| 128 | +### Known Issues |
| 129 | + |
| 130 | +#### Local audio |
| 131 | + |
| 132 | +A lack of audio is often in the local audio setup (mixer volumes turned to zero etc.). |
| 133 | +On Linux systems, the `pavucontrol` mixer may be the best starting point to resolve issues. |
| 134 | + |
| 135 | +#### Selective Stream forwarding failure |
| 136 | + |
| 137 | +Jitsi receives one or several audio and video streams from every participiant and selectively |
| 138 | +forwards those to all recipients that have subscribed to these streams. (Typically, a low-res video |
| 139 | +stream is sent in addition to a medium-res and a high-res one — if any high-res subscribers exist). |
| 140 | +This approach to video-conferencing is called |
| 141 | +[selective forwarding unit (SFU)](https://bloggeek.me/webrtcglossary/sfu/). |
| 142 | +Occasionally, one of the participants can not hear one other (out of many) participants but everyone |
| 143 | +else can hear echa other - a subscription to an audio (or video) stream may have gotten lost. |
| 144 | +In this case, a reconnect by the one not hearing is the best remedy. |
| 145 | + |
| 146 | +#### Screen sharing frame rate |
| 147 | + |
| 148 | +Some browsers seem to ignore the FPS setting and try to transmit a shared window (or a shared |
| 149 | +desktop) at high resolution (e.g. 2560x1600) with 30fps. This requires more bandwidth than ADSL |
| 150 | +links typically handle. This can result in low-resolution streams rather than the (wanted) low-fps |
| 151 | +high-resolution stream. |
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