How to host a secure private video-conferencing system yourself

[mavenik]

Abstract

In these unprecedented times of a global pandemic, video conferencing has taken the center stage when it comes to meetings, or virtually so. With recent security issues, bans, and class action lawsuits reported against a popular videoconferencing service, and a recent petition moved at the Supreme Court of India in this matter, it becomes important to find secure alternatives without losing functionality.

This talk covers setting up a self-hosted instance of Jitsi Meet, a secure and opensource alternative with maximum security and privacy (in Tor we trust). The talk shall start with a no-code setup of Jitsi Meet on Amazon AWS using Terraform Cloud, and then we will dive in deeper into what happens behind the scenes.

Expected Duration - 30 to 45 minutes + 15 minutes for QnA

Track - Beginner

Pre-requisites - None. Having Terraform CLI installed is desired to practice along, but not required.

Resources

1. Jitsi Meet Homepage
2. Infrastructure as Code
3. Orchestration
4. DNS
5. WebRTC
6. This is what end-to-end encryption should look like!
7. Simulcast
8. Terraform CLI Installation instructions
9. Installing Jitsi Meet on Amazon AWS with Terraform
10. Dancing Pigs

Slides/Talk Outline

1. What is the difference between hosted software and self-hosted software, and why you should care
2. What are the basic requirements for any self-hosted online solution?
3. Self-hosting manually
4. Infrastructure as code
5. No-code setup of Jitsi Meet with Amazon AWS and Terraform Cloud
6. Gotchas
   1. Network bandwidth
   2. Number of participants
   3. Cost
7. Under the hood
   1. What is Terraform?
   2. What is Amazon AWS?
   3. What is an Amazon EC2 instance?
   4. What is Route53?
   5. How does this play together?
   6. Running it from your local machine
8. Enhancements and possibilities with Jitsi
   1. Live streaming and recording
   2. Collaboration
   3. Single Sign On
   4. Integration with SIP for audio/voice calls
9. A word on enterprise scalability
10. QnA
11. Closing remarks

Link to all streams for the session: https://bit.ly/2WVi82F

Preferred time and mode
5pm on Saturday, May 23
Online video conference. We will host it on a self-hosted Jitsi setup and eat our own dog food. ;)

Previous Experience
April 2020 - Interactive session at RebootFest on Lean Practices for Remote Teams
Feb 2020 - A talk on Project Langdon at JSFoo Pune.
Feb 2020 - Panel discussion on Tooling and Processes for Managing Large Codebases at JSFoo Pune.

Checklist

Place an '[x]' (no spaces) in all the fields you agree to. You can keep the fields blank on which you don't agree

The talk/workshop speaker agrees to,

• Share the slides, code snippets and other material used during the talk
• If the talk is recorded, you grant the permission to release the video on Nagpur Techies' YouTube channel, Facebook Page, Meetup Page, and Twitter account under CC-BY-4.0 license
• Not do any hiring pitches during the talk and follow the Code of Conduct

[tusharjoshi]

Please also include some basic idea of how much one has to spend for hosting such a video for say 1 hour, with the current AWS cost structure

[mavenik]

@tusharjoshi Thanks for the feedback. I had missed out on this important aspect. Have included it under Gotchas.

[dracoamit]

Where can I see Gotchas?

[manishkungwani]

@dracoamit In the Slides/Talk Outline section.

@mavenik Link to the session on Friday?

[mavenik]

Link to all streams for the session:
https://bit.ly/2WVi82F