Enable private Nextcloud instance for school class during Corona Lockdown

ℹ️ Support 💬 Talk (spreed)
#1

Hi, i am hosting a Nextcloud instance for my family. Because in Germany Schools are closed I want to use Nextcloud Talk for my daughter´s school class for daily interaction. As far as I understood, talk for larger conference call are only available by using the professional service from Nextcloud. Is there a chance to enable my server for a defined period to be able to handle video conferences with around 20 people? My server should be powerful enough (8 core, 32 GB Ram).

Kind regards

solick

Videoconference performance
#2

You better contact nextcloud.com directly for your request.

Cheers.

#3

or read through Videoconference performance for alternatives.

#4

From my experience having a reliable video conference with 20 parties for any reasonable amount of time requires a miracle in a “normal” environment.
In today’s climate - when counting on QoS from an ISP would be delusional - I don’t think this is feasible unless you have your own private backbone…

#5

If that doesn’t work out, I know Kopano are offering free video conferencing during the crisis.

https://kopano.com/blog/video-conferencing-during-the-coronavirus-crisis/

I’d consider looking into Jitsi, which is 100% free and open source. It tries to handle large conferences efficiently.

#6

You can read here about performance of various solutions.

#7

Perhaps you can better use a system like https://jitsi.org .
You can use different servers or host your own.
Search for the app “jitsi meet” on android and iOS.

#8

JITSI is mentioned as a potent alternative to the big boys.
Especially in light of Zoom privacy issues

#9

Jitsi is a good service, which you can certainly run yourself. You could try testing this German instance, which was recently recommended to me as one that should handle a large number of simultaneous users. I have just started testing it, so feel free to check out the company hosting it.

You can add a password to the room if you want to limit random people dropping in. You’ll need each student to run the free app on their phone, or they can login from a web browser.

#10

If somebody wants help implementing an Open Source backend for Talk using Kurento Media Server for example to allow everyone to use it for more than 5 or so people is welcome to submit a PR:

#11

Thanks a lot for your great hints. I installed a Jitsi meet and it work like a charm.

It’s a pity that Nextcloud cannot be used for this.

Kind regards

Solick

2 Likes
#12

Noice, sounds like this thread is :sunglasses: Solved :face_with_monocle:

#13

If’ you’re interested in a solution around NC we’ve been looking into options for a client. I’d say “watch this space” but we’ve so far failed to setup a space to watch… If there’s broader interest we’ll sort a space to watch…

#14

Many scaling problems should be solved by 8.0.9, released last week - it adjusts quality based on the nr of participants, among other things. A typical network and hardware setup should handle 5-10 people.

The signalling back-end is now also open source, so you can give that a try.

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