Intermittent calls never connect

[alex-bntz]

Hey @bpbradley , first off just want to say I'm thankful for sharing your project, I've been using it and I'm very happy with the result. Cloudflare is 100x more snappy and the call quality and resiliency is great compared to a coturn server running on EC2 that I had previously.

One thing that I've noticed over time is that some times (maybe 20-30% of the attempted calls) get stuck on "Call connecting..." and I was wondering if you're ever come across that issue and if you had any luck identifying where it's coming from?

Checking at the logs of matrix-turnify, the matrix server and cloudflare (can't see much there anyway) nothing seems to be failing.

Also, If I hang up the call and place another one, it's more likely that then it'd connect properly.

So far I haven't noticed any pattern or any specific device doing that, though I've noticed that calls from some specific devices are more likely to get stuck than others.

[bpbradley]

Thanks for the report. I have not personally noticed that, but I can't necessarily rule out turnify being the cause. I also am probably a lighter user than most even though its my own project haha... I only use calls occasionally.

If everything is working, it will only ever make the request to turnify when you initiate the call, and it should provide your client the credentials. When the failure happens, do you observe the log for the credential request in the turnify logs? If that happens successfully, turnify is basically hands off and lets the matrix client and cloudflare workout the details... So issues from that point would be on one of those ends. But I would need to try to figure out a way to reproduce.

I will mention that in a few weeks or so I do plan a rewrite of turnify (been working on some other projects so maintaining this one has been on my backlog...), at which point I can spend more time digging into cases like this.

[alex-bntz]

I see no errors from either turnify nor matrix when that issue occurs tbh. It might be something from Cloudflare which I have no visibility over as I can't see any related logs (at least on the free version that I am).

My gut tells me it might be one of the client devices is authenticating but not connecting to the CF relay to establish the call..? But again, calls could also be P2P without me knowing so I could also be wrong.

On slightly separate note, I noticed the default credential TTL is 24 hours and at the moment I have it reduced it to 2 hours for both matrix and turnify/CF credentials. I will attempt to increase it to 24 hours and see if the issue is also reduced.

[bpbradley]

Changing the TTL makes a lot of sense to try. Worth going to 24 hours. You mentioned changing it in matrix too, but theoretically this shouldn't have an effect (unless there is some behavior I am unaware of). In fact, I have turn servers disabled entirely on my server. Turnify basically bypasses the route which gets turn settings from the homeserver. So the server might think it is disabled, but turnify is able to provide credentials itself and the client will use them as if the home server provided them.