Max publishers - How can I create a conference with more than 6 publishers?

General
1

I’d like to create my own video conferencing app.
For now I’m checking out how things works by reading the Video Room documentation and browsing the Video Room (multistream) demo. It seems that the limit of Publishers is 6, and I have managed to connect only 5 using a demo, however I’d like to use more.

Is there a way to let (for example) 20 users talk to each other on a single video call? Would that still use Video Room plugin?

PS. I’m using REST based API. Would picking WS solve the problem?

2

You configure the maximum number of publishers when creating the room: 6 just happens to be the value we use in the default demo,

That said, the web demo code is hardcoded to only show up to 6 users, so on the client side it’s your homework to change thatt constraint.

3

I’ve seen that in the config file:

# publishers = <max number of concurrent senders> (e.g., 6 for a video
#              conference or 1 for a webinar)

Is 6 an arbitrary number then, and I’m able to select the limit as it suits me?

What could be the reason for not being able to connect more than 5 publishers to my local Janus Gateway instance?
In fact the 6th attempt doesn’t throw any error, but every step takes tens of seconds, instead of a fraction of a second.

4

I suspect you’re simulating all those users from the same browser instance, and using HTTP as a transport for the Janus API. Browsers have a limit to how many TCP connections you can keep up for HTTP to the same server (I think 6?), and since long polls will keep one busy, new requests will need to wait for a connection to become available.

As such, this is a limitation of your testbed, not Janus. Just use different browser instances or profiles to simulate more than 3-4 users.

5

That seemed to work. Although I couldn’t use the camera, because only one browser at a time can access it, I could join in “subscriber-mode”.

Thanks a lot @lorenzo !

6

There are ways to tell, e.g., Chrome to use a fake video stream rather than a camera. I can’t recall the exact way you start the browser to do that, but it’s possible and solves that issue.

7

Please can you point me in the right direction on using the Rest API how to change the number of publishers I have tried the edit request but I "error": "Unauthorized (wrong secret)" response but the auth is correct meaning secret is correct, is there away to set the pushers size on create request the docs are not clear/explicit on this part, if so please share sample post request with other options that may not be explicit as well .

8

Are you sending secret parameter in that edit request?

https://janus.conf.meetecho.com/docs/videoroom

9

yes I am sending the secrete and edit request .

10

I am sorted , I have managed to resolve the issue thank you @DanielGrad

11

It would be valuable to other users to let them know what the issue was.
Even if the issue was trivial (like typo), it teaches others to double check everything.