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Dino 0.3: Video calls and conferences – encrypted and peer-to-peer

dino.im

61–70 of 76 posts

Re: Dino 0.3: Video calls and conferences – encrypted and peer-to-peer

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've used the prosody XMPP server and the synapse matrix server. IMHO, the basic prosody setup is a bit simpler, but with the "extra" configuration such as retention policies, they're equal in setup effort. On the other hand, prosody is an order of magnitute easier to maintain and administer. synapse is too brittle, and its not uncommon to use gigabytes of memory, while prosody's resource usage is barely noticible. O…

cool. so, would xmpp run on a 512mb vps? what about your average storage required? 20gb? 40? could we say, define 2-3 days attachment retention rule to save on space?

Totally possible. Running Prosody on Debian 11 Host including coturn and also running mumble and still 250MB free RAM of 512MB.

Re: Dino 0.3: Video calls and conferences – encrypted and peer-to-peer

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've used the prosody XMPP server and the synapse matrix server. IMHO, the basic prosody setup is a bit simpler, but with the "extra" configuration such as retention policies, they're equal in setup effort. On the other hand, prosody is an order of magnitute easier to maintain and administer. synapse is too brittle, and its not uncommon to use gigabytes of memory, while prosody's resource usage is barely noticible. O…

cool. so, would xmpp run on a 512mb vps? what about your average storage required? 20gb? 40? could we say, define 2-3 days attachment retention rule to save on space?

In the past, people have squeezed Prosody onto their routers with 32MB RAM and the like. Today you might struggle fitting the Modern XMPP experience into that, but 512M or 1GB should be plenty.

As for storage, it really depends on how many and how big pictures or other files are shared. Clients like Conversations will compress images into a few hundred KB by default, so you can imagine how many will fit into even 1GB. Text messages take even less space.

Re: Dino 0.3: Video calls and conferences – encrypted and peer-to-peer

#63

I love Dino! I want to tell all my friends to install it on their ... oh. Oh no. They use macOS and Windows. I don't mean to be a downer, but if you want to reach a lot of people with your amazing software (not saying that you have to, but it seems like one of the intentions of the project), it's a good idea to get them where they already are. Side note 1: Vala/GTK could be an amazing app development platform if the…

> They use macOS and Windows.

Here are Dino builds for Windows.[0]

[0] https://github.com/LAGonauta/dino/releases

Re: Dino 0.3: Video calls and conferences – encrypted and peer-to-peer

#64
For those who want to try Dino here is (text?) chat:

> https://chat@dino.im?join

In Dino (Desktop) window click on [+] in left-top corner on app title bar, and then input channel to join as next:

    chat@dino.im
Then click "Next" button.

N.B. Here is offical announcment of Dino 0.3 release thread on Mastodon.[0]

[0] https://fosstodon.org/@dino/107787204408646020

Re: Dino 0.3: Video calls and conferences – encrypted and peer-to-peer

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Latency is as good as you can do when doing peer to peer calls, the trade off is bandwidth (and CPU, but mostly bandwidth). Latency and non-terminated encryption (end-to-end, not point-to-point) is great, and for calls with 3 or fewer peers the stability is fine. More peers than that and you probably want a media router in the mix, which adds some latency (all the calls have to route through a central server) and the…

It's definitely possible to route encrypted streams, see also how Jitsi does it: https://jitsi.org/blog/e2ee/

> This is what end-to-end encryption should look like!

> Published on: April 12, 2020 by Emil

> Work in Progress!

Re: Dino 0.3: Video calls and conferences – encrypted and peer-to-peer

#66
post #21
post #18

P2P group video calls don’t work well unfortunately. Most people barely have enough upload bandwidth to upload one video stream. Needing to upload a stream per peer is a nonstarter for most people.

From the article: "Peer-to-peer calls require more bandwidth than calls routed through a server and are thus not suited for a large number of participants. In the future, we plan to also develop calls via a forwarding server to solve resource issues on the client side and to allow for calls with more participants."

It's even worse than that. P2P means that connection differences between peers also makea difference. User A might see users B and C, but user B might on see A due to a connection difference between user B and C. It is very annoying to enter a group chat and hear:

User B: Is user C's stream dead for anyone else? User A: I see user C. User C: Sorry, what? I'm right here.

Honestly, other than a 1-1 chat, I can't think of a situation where p2p is worthwhile. Even then, it's almost always better to use an SFU.

Re: Dino 0.3: Video calls and conferences – encrypted and peer-to-peer

#69
post #10

I run a group chat for my family. I recently switched my server from running plain Prosody to Snikket. People with phones use the Snikket android app, but my kids that are too young for phones join in with Dino. Dino is a really nice client. Snikket is pretty good as a phone client... I think maybe there is a way to get push notifications working through the standard Android infrastructure which would be an improveme…

> but my kids that are too young for phones join in with Dino Curious about this, since it seems to imply your kids use Linux desktops. How has that worked out?

Not the OP, but I gave my daughter a Linux laptop as her computer running Arch Linux. I guess she got it at around age 7 (she's 10 now).

No issues with it. The (IMO, kind of sad) reality is that almost everything she needs to interact with is either web or cross-platform electron. The only real exception here is Zoom, which has a native linux client. She doesn't really need to understand much detail to use the machine.

She used GNOME before she ever saw Windows. We switched school systems and now she has a Windows laptop at school and her Linux laptop here, which she switches back and forth between without any trouble.

The only usability quirk is the LUKS FDE decryption phase, where she has to enter in her password before the system starts. There's no GUI and bad feedback on when she's typing, so it's confusing. But she understands what to do now and usually has no trouble (you might be surprised at how flexible kids are).

Re: Dino 0.3: Video calls and conferences – encrypted and peer-to-peer

#70

is setting up and maintaining an xmpp /jabber server and clients easier/difficult than matrix? i have been mulling the switch to a selfhosted thing for some time now but i need something that can run on low resources but isnt overly complicated

XMPP server is slightly easier to setup and it requires far less resources than matrix. I think that in the server aspect XMPP is superior, in both performance and scalability (ejabberd).

The client setup in XMPP and Matrix seem to have the same usual steps (username and password). No big differences here, other than Element defaults to matrix.org to create an account (which contributes to centralization).

I'd say that XMPP clients are generally better than matrix's ones. Maybe because matrix is an immature and younger protocol, but Element seems to be the only client that implements everything and UI is confusing and it's electron.

And a personal preference, I like using my GPG keys to encrypt my conversations when possible in XMPP. This wouldn't be possible in matrix.

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