Questions about self hosted instance for remote class instruction

Install & Config
#1

Hey guys, I’m the tech for a school that is now looking to implement rather quickly the ability to have instructors run lectures online for a class of 12ish. All of our labs are running debian linux with firefox as the browser.

Apologies if some of these questions are rather theoretical in nature, i haven’t been able to get into the office with the covid shutdown and run any real tests other then a local install at home here.

We would be hosting the instance on our wan, locally in the school. All students would be on the same lan as the server, with an instructor connecting from either elsewhere on the wan, and eventually from an exposed url on the internet.

I’m not really concerned about the hardware reqs, we’ll have enough hardware around to stand up a server for 15-20 concurrent connections. I’m more interested in trying to figure out the bandwidth requirements we would need.

With the vast majority of conference participants would be sitting on the same lan as the server, with one or two remote participants, I’m curious what kind of bw the participants not on the lan would require.

During lecture, while all the students would need to see the instructor, the instructor would not necessarily need to see all the students cams/audio. Is there a way to turn off the reception of video from certain clients to save bandwidth? Or is it just a case of the students turning off their cams when not needed I guess?

I’m also curious if anyone has any feedback on the desktop sharing feature while running Linux. This could definitely a feature that we would be making use of. We have some in house apps we use and it looks like the ability is there to share a running app. Just have to been able to test it.

Thanks, pretty excited at what Jitsi has to offer us

#2

What have you done with jitsi so far?

Where have you looked for information about jitsi?

#3

While Firefox works, it’s not a great performer compared to Chrome-based browsers. For participants with limited bandwidth it would be better to use a Chrome-based browser.

since these would be teachers, more than most ADSL connections. The upload is very important and would be the limiting factor particularly for screen sharing (=documents to read on screen). At least 5 Mbits/s for upload would be good. A typical ADSL (less than 1Mbits/s) would not cut it. Latency matters too, too many people forget that for a good meeting hearing well is far more important than being able to count the pimples on the speaker’s face. Between near constant 20ms and irregular 80ms in average ping time, there is an chasm in sound quality.

Should be a matter of setting lastN parameter, Jitsi-meet is supposed to take care of the rest.

Desktop sharing works with Linux, you should test it youself with meet.jit.si. Limited to 5 frames/s (whatever the platform) by default IIRC.

don’t see why it should not work for you, you can start with a basic install + secure domain and enhance it according to your needs and skills.