Due to the sharply increased popularity of remote work, we decided to offer a video conferencing service. Like most of our other services, it is free. In order not to reinvent the wheel, the foundation is built on an open-source solution. The main part is based on WebRTC, which allows you to talk in the browser simply by clicking on the link. I will write about the opportunities that we offer and some of the problems that we encountered below.
At the beginning of March, we decided to offer our customers We tested several options, to speed up the launch and maximize the functions, we chose the ready-made open-source solution Jitsi meet. They already wrote about him on Habré, so I won’t open America here. But we, of course, did not just deploy and install it. And adjusted and added some of the functions.
List of available functions
We offer a standard set of jitsi functionality + minor improvements and integration with the existing telephony system.
- WebRTC high quality calls
- SSL encryption (not p2p yet, but Habr already wrote that it might be soon)
- Clients for ios/android
- Increasing the security level of the conference: creating a link, setting a password in the Zadarma personal account (the creator is a moderator). That is, not like in jitsi - where, whoever entered first is the main one.
- Simple text chat in a conference
- Ability to share screen and Youtube videos
- Integration with IP-telephony: the ability to connect to the conference by phone
In the near future, it is also planned to add recording and broadcasting of conferences on Youtube.
How to use it?
Extremely simple:
- We go to the conference page (if there is no account - )
- Create a room (we also recommend setting a password).
- We distribute the link to everyone and communicate.
For mobile devices, you need to install a mobile client (they are available in the AppStore and Google Play), for a computer, just open the link in a browser. If you suddenly do not have access to the Internet, you can call the phone and dial the conference PIN.
Why do I need you? Set up Jitsi myself
If there are resources, time and desire, then why not? But the first thing we recommend paying attention to is openness. . If you use conferences for business, then it can be harmful. Out of the box, jitsi creates a conference using any link that was accessed, the moderator's rights and the ability to set a password are given to the one who entered first, there are no restrictions on creating other conferences.
Thus, it is easier to create a server “for everyone” than for yourself. But then you can find one of the ready-made options, now there are already at least several open jitsi servers on the network.
But in the case of a “for everyone” server, there are issues with load and balancing. In our case, we have already solved the problem of loading and scaling (it already works on several servers, if necessary, adding new ones takes a couple of hours).
Also, in order to avoid peak loads from unknown users (or just DDOS), there are limits.
What are the restrictions?
Videoconferencing limits:
- 1 room up to 10 participants - for registered users.
- 2 rooms for 20 participants - after replenishment of the account (at least once every six months) - that is, for current Zadarma clients.
- 5 rooms for 50 participants - for clients working with the Office package.
- 10 rooms for 100 participants - for clients working with the Corporation package.
But most browsers and computers will be able to adequately display up to 60-70 people in a conference. For more, we recommend either broadcasting on youtube or using the conference call integration.
Telephony integration
Despite additional services and services, Zadarma is primarily a telephone operator. Therefore, it is natural that we added integration with the existing telephone system.
Thanks to the integration, you can connect audio and video conferences (both through a free Zadarma PBX and through your own client PBX, if any). It is enough to dial the SIP number 00300 and enter the PIN, which is indicated under the link to the conference room.
In Zadarma PBX, you can create a voice conference (by adding people to it by dialing 000) and add a “participant” with the number 00300 to it.
It is also possible to connect to the conference by calling a phone number (numbers are available in 40 countries of the world and 20 cities of the Russian Federation).
Why do we need this?
This is not the first and not the last service that Zadarma offers for free. Previously suggested: , , Callback widget, Calltracking, Callme widget. There is only one goal - to attract customers so that some of them also purchase paid services (virtual numbers, outgoing calls). That is, we try to invest instead of advertising in the development of free products. Free services have already helped to attract more than 1.6 million customers, and we continue our successful practice now.
PS As you can see, we have already gone through the “rake” of setting up balancing, fault tolerance, and additional security. In addition, there was a lot of minor tuning and debugging, including Russification really translated into Russian (and 4 other languages). We also tried to make integration with VoIP as convenient as possible. A separate portion of the blood drank the moderation of applications for Android / iOS (but not in vain, in Android they crossed the bar of 1000 installations in one week).
You can try to set up your own server, or use our free conference.
Any suggestions for further improvements to video conferencing, or the development of other free products, are welcome in the comments.
Source: habr.com