We currently use full renegotiation for audio, video, and screen sharing
reconnections, which involves re-creating transports and signaling channels
from scratch. While effective in some scenarios, this approach is slow and,
especially with outbound cameras and screen sharing, prone to failures.
To counter that, WebRTC provides a mechanism to restart ICE without needing
to re-create the peer connection. This allows us to avoid full renegotiation
and bypass some server-side signaling limitations. Implementing ICE restart
should make outbound camera/screen sharing reconnections more reliable and
faster.
This commit implements the ICE restart procedure for all WebRTC components'
*outbound* peers. It is based on bbb-webrtc-sfu >= v2.15.0-beta.0, which
added support for ICE restart requests. This feature is *off by default*.
To enable it, adjust the following flags:
- `/etc/bigbluebutton/bbb-webrtc-sfu/production.yml`: `allowIceRestart: true`
- `/etc/bigbluebutton/bbb-html5.yml`: `public.kurento.restartIce`
* Refer to the inline documentation; this can be enabled on the client side
per media type.
* Note: The default max retries for audio is lower than for cameras/screen
sharing (1 vs 3). This is because the full renegotiation process for audio
is more reliable, so ICE restart is attempted first, followed by full
renegotiation if necessary. This approach is less suitable for cameras/
screen sharing, where longer retry periods for ICE restart make sense
since full renegotation there is... iffy.
Endpoints that are inbound/`recvonly` only (client's perspective) do *not*
support ICE restart yet. There are two main reasons:
- Server-side changes are required to support `recvonly` endpoints,
particularly the proper handling of the server’s `setup` role in the
its SDPs during an ICE restart. These changes are too broad for now,
so they are deferred to future releases (SFU@v2.16).
- Full reconnections for `recvonly` endpoints are currently reliable,
unlike for `send*` endpoints. ICE restarts could still provide benefits
for `recvonly` endpoints, but we need the server updates first.
This is a rework of the audio join procedure whithout the explict listen
only separation in mind. It's supposed to be used in conjunction with
the transparent listen only feature so that the distinction between
modes is seamless with minimal server-side impact. An abridged list of
changes:
- Let the user pick no input device when joining microphone while
allowing them to set an input device on the fly later on
- Give the user the option to join audio with no input device whenever
we fail to obtain input devices, with the option to try re-enabling
them on the fly later on
- Add the option to open the audio settings modal (echo test et al)
via the in-call device selection chevron
- Rework the SFU audio bridge and its services to support
adding/removing tracks on the fly without renegotiation
- Rework the SFU audio bridge and its services to support a new peer
role called "passive-sendrecv". That role is used by dupled peers
that have no active input source on start, but might have one later
on.
- Remove stale PermissionsOverlay component from the audio modal
- Rework how permission errors are detected using the Permissions API
- Rework the local echo test so that it uses a separate media tag
rather than the remote
- Add new, separate dialplans that mute/hold FreeSWITCH channels on
hold based on UA strings. This is orchestrated server-side via
webrtc-sfu and akka-apps. The basic difference here is that channels
now join in their desired state rather than waiting for client side
observers to sync the state up. It also mitigates transparent listen
only performance edge cases on multiple audio channels joining at
the same time.
The old, decoupled listen only mode is still present in code while we
validate this new approach. To test this, transparentListenOnly
must be enabled and listen only mode must be disable on audio join so
that the user skips straight through microphone join.
* Refactor: Make bundle using webpack
* Fix: restore after install codes and a few settings
* Fix: build script folder permission
* Refactor: Remove support to async import on audio bridges
* Upgrade npm using nvm
* Avoid questions on npm ci execution
* Let npm ci install dev dependencies (as we need the build tools here)
* Fix: enconding
* Fix: old lock files
* Remove: bbb-config dependency to bbb-html5 service, bbb-html5 isn't a service anymore
* Fix: TS errors
* Fix: eslint
* Fix: chat styles
* npm install with "lockfileVersion": 3 (newer npm)
* build: allow nodejs 22
* node 22; drop meteor from CI and bbb-conf
* TEMP: use bbb-install without mongo but with node 22 and newer image
* build: relax nodejs condition to not trip 22.6
* build: ensure dir /usr/share/bigbluebutton/nginx exists
* init sites-available/bbb; drop disable-transparent-
* nginx complaining of missing file and ;
* TMP: print status of services
* WIP: tweak nginx location to debug
* Fix: webcam widgets alignments
* akka-apps -- update location of settings.yml
* build: add locales path for nginx
* docs and config changes for removal of meteor
* Fix: build encoding and locales enpoint folder path
* build: set wss url for media
* Add: Enable minimizer and modify to Terser
* Fix: TS errors
---------
Co-authored-by: Tiago Jacobs <tiago.jacobs@gmail.com>
Co-authored-by: Anton Georgiev <anto.georgiev@gmail.com>
Co-authored-by: Anton Georgiev <antobinary@users.noreply.github.com>
