How Reliable is the Public Jitsi Meet Server (meet.jit.si)?

[Yasuro]

Hi. I’m a complete Jitsi Meet noob and I hope my post will not rub anyone the wrong way.

I’m curious — how reliable is the public server (meet.jit.si)? I need to give seminars from time to time (not very frequently) to an audience of varying sizes, up to 50. I am wondering if I can rely on Jitsi’s public server for it.

Related to this question is whether 8x8 Meet users get better server than the one at meet.jit.si.

In all likelihood, my seminars will never entail heated discussions where multipe parties speak at the same time. At any given time, it is at most just two parties speaking at the same time; I will actively mute those who are not supposed to be talking. Also, it is very, very unlikely that I will need anyone (including myself) to be sharing their video; again, I will probably just not allow video altogether as the moderator.

As the lecturer, I will need to use slides and they need to be shown to the participants via screen sharing. I will also need to show pre-recorded videos (e.g., YouTube videos) from time to time, but they are mostly for show. The videos do not necessarily need to play smoothly, or have great definition, on the viewers’ end. If I need them to really listen to the content, I will play the audio alone, which will be mixed on my end with my voice.

Actually, I just did give such a seminar using Jitsi Meet with the public server a day ago to an audience of 15 or so, and it failed spectacularly. From the beginning, I had made it very clear the primary reason of hosting the seminar was to test Jitsi Meet, so I hope the participants came in with that in mind, but there’s no denying it left a bad impression on them.

The problems we experienced were the following:

• My screen sharing simply did not work at all.
• My voice quality degraded over time (the number of participants did not change much). I had to get out of the meeting and join again, at which point the voice quality noticeably improved, but gradually degraded again.

The second point may be due to the fact that I did not use a headset, but I cannot think of any reason for the first point.

[saghul]

Hey there, and welcome to our community!

meet.jit.si should work just fine for your use case. If it doesn’t, we have bugs to fix.

@Yasuro

My screen sharing simply did not work at all.

What browser and version were you using?

@Yasuro

My voice quality degraded over time (the number of participants did not change much). I had to get out of the meeting and join again, at which point the voice quality noticeably improved, but gradually degraded again.

Generally speaking I’d always recommend a headset, specially in that kind of scenario. It could be related to Acoustic Gain Control (AGC) which is not easy to disable, you can add #config.disableAGC=1 to your URL before visiting the URL.

[Yasuro]

Thanks, Saúl, for your nice and warm welcome message!

Yes, I’ve learned my lesson about headsets. I am going to always use one when I have an online meeting from this point onwards.

One question, though.

you can add #config.disableAGC=1 to your URL before visiting the URL.

How do I do this? The URL for the moderator seems to be of the form https://moderated.jitsi.net/*blahblahblah*. How am I supposed to add that directive before this?

The browser I am using is the Windows version of Chrome 102.0.5005.115 (Official Build) (64-bit), which claims to be the latest version.

What is odd when screen sharing does not work for me is that on my end, everything appears to be working perfectly. So I do not notice it unless someone else tells me so.

Another odd thing is that once I cannot screen share, no one else can screen share either, even when he/she is allowed to by the moderator.

But from the way client apps act (UI change), it seems they do recognize that screen sharing is attempted by some other party, but do not receive media data.

… I have just realized another problem. When I am experiencing this problem, I can no longer transmit audio either. So it seems all the media transfers go down.

Will this help in troubleshooting this problem?

The nasty part of this problem is that it does not always happen. When it doesn’t, everything seems to work beautifully. When it does, though, I do not know what to do, except one thing.

That is to have everyone, including me, the moderator, get out of the meeting and then join again, in which case I am able to screen share again.

Yasuro

[saghul]

@Yasuro

How do I do this? The URL for the moderator seems to be of the form https://moderated.jitsi.net/*blahblahblah*. How am I supposed to add that directive before this?

https://moderated.jitsi.net/blahblahblah#config.disableAGC=1

@Yasuro

What is odd when screen sharing does not work for me is that on my end, everything appears to be working perfectly. So I do not notice it unless someone else tells me so.

Can you see your own screen? if you tap on your local view?

@Yasuro

… I have just realized another problem. When I am experiencing this problem, I can no longer transmit audio either. So it seems all the media transfers go down.

Will this help in troubleshooting this problem?

Hum, that’s very odd! Can you open your browser JS console and paste the logs here?

[Yasuro]

https://moderated.jitsi.net/blahblahblah#config.disableAGC=1

Thank you!

Can you see your own screen? if you tap on your local view?

Yes, I can. So on my end, everything appears hunky dory.

Hum, that’s very odd! Can you open your browser JS console and paste the logs here?

Yes, I believe so, but the problem is that it does not happen all the time. It happens only sporadically, usually when I really wish it didn’t. Please give me some time.

Thank you!

Yasuro

[saghul]

@Yasuro

Yes, I believe so, but the problem is that it does not happen all the time. It happens only sporadically, usually when I really wish it didn’t. Please give me some time.

Sure thing, we’ll be here when you have some logs to inspect. Thank you!