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coTURN quick installation

What is a TURN Server?​

A TURN server is a network entity in charge of relaying media in VoIP related protocols. This includes SIP, H.323, WebRTC and other protocols.

When you try reaching out directly from one browser to another with voice or video data (sometimes other arbitrary kind of data), you end up going through different network devices. Some of these devices include Firewalls and NATs (Network Address Translators) which may decide due to internal policies not to pass your data.

When there are some network securities like firewall, then data packet does not transfer and we do not get proper streaming of another user.

So we use TURN server for this solution.

Ant Media Server does not require TURN server even if there is Symmetric NAT. However it's required if UDP ports are blocked for any reason or Ant Media Server is used as signaling server in P2P communication.

Install TURN server​

apt-get update && apt-get install coturn

Enable TURN server​

Edit the following file.

vim /etc/default/coturn

add the following line

TURNSERVER_ENABLED=1

Configure TURN server​

Edit file: /etc/turnserver.conf by adding following 2 lines as mentioned below:

user=username:password
realm=your_public_ip_address

Once done with making the changes as suggested above, restart TURN server with command systemctl restart coturn.

Note: If you use an AWS EC2 instance, you must add the following lines in the turnserver.conf file.

  • EC2 private ip address : relay-ip=your_private_ip
  • EC2 Public/Private ip address : external-ip=your_public_ip/your_private_ip

Also, Open the following ports on AWS security group

  • TCP 443 #TLS listening port
  • TCP 3478-3479 #coturn listening port
  • TCP 32355-65535 #relay ports range
  • UDP 3478-3479 #coturn listening port
  • UDP 32355-65535 #relay ports range

That 's it.

How to test Turn Server​

Command Line

shell turnutils\_uclient -v -t -T -u username -w password -p 3478 turn\_server\_ip

Web Browser

Open the following link and fill required details. Thereafter, Add Server here : https://webrtc.github.io/samples/src/content/peerconnection/trickle-ice/

Once done. Click Gather Candidates. If the details you provided, validated, you will get the output as in the below image.

How to add Turn Server to Ant Media sample pages​

To add TURN server on client side, edit publish_webrtc.html in the /antmedia/webapps/App-Name/samples folder for WebRTC publish sample, and edit play.html, player.html, and other sample pages in the /antmedia/webapps/App-Name directory.

var pc_config = {
        'iceServers' : [ {
                 'urls' : 'turn:turn_server_address:port_number',
                             'username': "username",
                             'credential': "password",
        } ]
    };

From Ant Media Server v2.5.0 & above, TURN server can be configured on server side as well. Refer: https://antmedia.io/docs/guides/configuration-and-testing/Configuring-STUN-addresses/#configuring-for-ant-media-244-and-later-versions.