Webrtc with Goinstant not working across different networks

Question

I'm trying to implement a video conferencing system using Webrtc, and for now using the Goinstant webrtc service

But i'm having lots of problems making it work between different networks. Even their own demo webrtc.goinstant.com seems to fail When all users are within the same local network at my workplace, everything seems fine. But when I try to invite external users, they're unable to see us, and we're unable to see them

I also already had the following situation:

• me at home
• one colleague in another city
• two more colleagues at the workplace, in the same network as before

the four of us were in the same conference, using the demo linked above. Me and my colleague (the ones who were on different networks), could see each other but not the other two. Similarly, both my colleagues at the workplace could also see each other, but not us.

I don't know where to start with this. Is this a problem with our networks? With GoInstant? Or with Webrtc itself?

Answer 1

Networks behind a symmetric NAT will not allow direct P2P communication with WebRTC, for these cases you need to configure a TURN server for WebRTC to fall back to.

How does WebRTC work? has a pretty good explanation of why we need TURN servers for WebRTC.

For more details on how to configure this in the GoInstant WebRTC widget take a look at the peerConnectionConfig option here: https://developers.goinstant.com/v1/widgets/audio_and_video/index.html#parameters

Answer 2

I had the same frustrations and solved them by creating www.netscan.co especially for WebRTC it will reliably detect the network status of the client, if it's behind a NAT and if any connectivity (UDP/TCP) can be established.

That way you can easily eliminate and troubleshoot problems even remotely (just ask your users to run the test)