Jitsi Installation Recipe for >10 Participants?

[tshirt-chihuahu]

Hi, all. Seems like the cloudron team is busy with other priorities.

I did a vanilla Jitsi install towards the end of last year, but the performance degraded substantially with >3. And just using a bigger machine didn't seem like the right strategy, and it seemed like there must be a better way....

My benchmark is Zoom equivalent quality for 10 participants.

Anybody got a recipe that is working for >=10 participants?

Any recommendations welcome.

[mario]

@tshirt-chihuahu I'm not sure what a vanilla Jitsi entails, but you need SFU to make it happen in most cases - for Jitsi, it's Jitsi Videobridge.

[robi]

As @mario correctly points out, it's not the Jitsi configuration that's the problem, it's the architecture of the video streams.

By default all streams go to all clients, hence after 3-4 participants, the clients start struggling processing everyone elses video stream.

What's needed is a back end video distribution server that handles all the video streams and only sends a single stream to each client combining all of the client streams into one. Single video stream of 4+ participants. Now even a lowly smartphone can participate with 4+ people as it only has to process one "view" and not combine 4+ on it's tiny CPU/GPU all by itself.

[tshirt-chihuahu]

@mario By "vanilla" I just meant the default installation setup. My vague understanding is that Jitsi Meet includes Jitsi Videobridge (which is an SFU), but additional Videobgridge nodes can be added to scale up the number of participants. The default installation is just. a single node. Does that match your understanding?

Strangely, I haven't found any up to date documentation on how to get this setup.

I can certainly go prod the JItsi forum, but I thought someone with a cloudron perspective (who is also awaiting jitsi) might've figured this out by now given most people need to be able to allow more than 3 participants....

UPDATE: just found this in the Jitsi docs on "Scalable Setup" - definitely not a recipe but it describes the "mutliple videobridget nodes" strategy: https://jitsi.github.io/handbook/docs/devops-guide/devops-guide-scalable

[tshirt-chihuahu]

@robi said in Jitsi Installation Recipe for >10 Participants?:

As @mario correctly points out, it's not the Jitsi configuration that's the problem, it's the architecture of the video streams.

By default all streams go to all clients, hence after 3-4 participants, the clients start struggling processing everyone elses video stream.

What's needed is a back end video distribution server that handles all the video streams and only sends a single stream to each client combining all of the client streams into one. Single video stream of 4+ participants. Now even a lowly smartphone can participate with 4+ people as it only has to process one "view" and not combine 4+ on it's tiny CPU/GPU all by itself.

@robi this sounds great! Any documentation/resources on how I can get this setup? I honestly know nothing about video distribution servers. So a few signposts would go a long way.

[luckow]

@tshirt-chihuahu I followed https://jitsi.github.io/handbook/docs/devops-guide/devops-guide-quickstart on a hetzner cx21 (around €6.00/month). It's a good fit for up to 15 concurrent user.

[tshirt-chihuahu]

@luckow said in Jitsi Installation Recipe for >10 Participants?:

@tshirt-chihuahu I followed https://jitsi.github.io/handbook/docs/devops-guide/devops-guide-quickstart on a hetzner cx21 (around €6.00/month). It's a good fit for up to 15 concurrent user.

That's great news! Thank you.

Something must've changed since last year, as I wasn't anywhere near being able to support 15 users with similar specs.....but this is fantastic to hear. I'll give it a shot.... If only there was a US host as well-priced as hetzner

[marcusquinn]

@tshirt-chihuahu Try Contabo

[luckow]

Today I stumbled across https://github.com/switnet-ltd/quick-jibri-installer.
The basic installation was done in less than 25 minutes. After that I have a full Jitsi meeting with recordings, storage access to recordings via Nextcloud, Grafana for metrics, Etherpad for sharing documents and YouTube streaming.
The whole stack runs on a CPX31 Hetzner Cloud Vm for around 15€/M.
I have no idea how many people at a time. I also have no idea how easy it is to upgrade the whole machine.

But my first reaction after the installation was: Wow. Well done.

[marcusquinn]

@luckow Great find! Might give this a try too.

[robi]

@luckow Sounds like this could be adapted to a Cloudron App having it install in the appropriate directories for 'w' and 'ro' filesystems.