I have been experiencing an issue that has persisted from version 11 through to the 13 beta when using the “Talk” app (as it’s now called). Most of the time it works great, but occasionally one or more callers will not be able to see/hear another caller who is visible/audible to everyone else. Often if the affected callers try to close their browser tab and re-join the call and/or reload the page, it takes several minutes for them to re-join, if it works at all. Often the person’s icon appears with a spinner and never fully connects.
We are using coturn for STUN/TURN, and all of the users are behind NAT and so are using the TURN server to connect. I’m not sure if this is a Nextcloud problem, or a coturn problem, but I’d appreciate some guidance on how best to troubleshoot the problem and where to begin looking.
I experienced the same problems with NC 13 and coturn for STUN and TURN, but had no opportunity to investigate further. Only happens with three or more participants.
I’m trying out Nextcloud 14/Nextcloud Talk 4 (with coturn configured as well) with some callers, and here’s what I can say, FWIW: each caller would do well to:
be aware that if the call quality starts getting choppy (voice or video gets choppy), press the little camera button to drop the video, and the audio still continues working, so at least a voice call continues. So video is sort of “use it while you can, drop it if you must”.
be aware that even if you have a TURN server, you often can’t really stop the lack of Net Neutrality (unfair QOS rules) putting a squeeze on your bandwidth partway through your calls (unless you are on a LAN). Pro Tip: have your TURN server listen on port 443. Since you wisely set up SSL encryption on your TURN traffic (right? ), that HTTPS-impersonating traffic (if it is TCP) will quite possibly get far better QOS treatment. SSL traffic on port 443 is far more likely going to get 1st class treatment, over SSL traffic on the default TURN port, which will very possibly get 2nd-class citizen treatment by the non-Net-Neutral routers that you pass through.
use a laptop or desktop, not a smartphone or tablet. My sense is that the mobile OS’ will always lag behind the desktop experience of Nextcloud Talk. And furthermore, mobile processors have less compute power to crunch the video. YMMV on mobile, to say the least.
Use Google Chrome or Firefox. They are the two frontrunner browsers for WebRTC support.
If on a laptop, plug it into the wall for power. If the OS decides to throttle down the CPU to save battery power, that can hurt video quality. I’ve seen this behavior happening in OS/X.
), that HTTPS-impersonating traffic (if it is TCP) will quite possibly get far better QOS treatment. SSL traffic on port 443 is far more likely going to get 1st class treatment, over SSL traffic on the default TURN port, which will very possibly get 2nd-class citizen treatment by the non-Net-Neutral routers that you pass through.