publishStreamManagerProxy

Publishing RTC Streams over Stream Manager Proxy

The streammanager WebRTC proxy is a communication layer built inside streammanager web application which allows it to act as a proxy gateway for webrtc publishers / subscribers. The target use case of this communication layer is to facilitate a secure browser client to be able to connect to a "unsecure" remote websocket endpoint for consuming WebRTC services offered by Red5 Pro.

Stream Manager autoscaling works with dynamic nodes which are associated with dynamic IP addresses and cannot have a SSL attached to them. The proxy layer helps publishers to connect and initiate a WebRTC publish session from a secure (ssl enabled) domain to a unsecure Red5pro origin having using an IP address.

Publishers

It should be noted that the Red5 Pro WebRTC SDK provides to instances to establish a proxy connection through the Stream Manager for publishing:

• WHIPClient - utilizes WebRTC-HTTP ingestion to establish a connection through series of HTTP/S requests.
• RTCPublisher - utilizes WebSocket to establish a connection.

WHIPClient

When using the WHIPClient instance, you do not need to be concerned about accessing Origin addresses to instruct the Stream Manager Proxy where to send streams. The Stream Manager itself with detect where to proxy the stream to the correct origin.

RTCPublisher

When using the RTCPublisher instance, you will need to first make a Stream Manager API request to request the Origin node instance information that you wish to proxy to. As this is an additional step - and that the connection times are longer than that of WHIP/WHEP - it is recommended to use the WHIPClient.

Please refer to the Basic Publisher Documentation to learn more about the basic setup.

In order to properly run the Stream Manager examples, you will need to configure you server for cluster infrastructure as described in the following documentation: https://www.red5.net/docs/installation/.

Server Configuration

Please read about WHIP/WHEP Configuration for Standalone and Stream Manager support.

You also need to ensure that the stream manager proxy layer is enabled. The configuration section can be found in stream manager's config file - red5-web.properties

## WEBSOCKET PROXY SECTION

proxy.enabled=false

Example Code

• index.html
• index.js

Setup

As mentioned in the previous section, there are two instances from the WebRTC SDK that can be used to establish a publishing session. They differ slightly in their setup described below.

Setup - WHIPClient

The WHIPClient will make a WHIP endpoint connection to the Stream Manager which will now which Origin node to proxy the broadcast stream to. As such, setting up a WHIPClient for autoscaling is very similar to the setting up a WHIPClient as you would on a standalone server:

function determinePublisher(serverAddress) {
  const { host, app, stream1 } = configuration
  var config = {...configuration,
    ...defaultConfiguration,
    ...getUserMediaConfiguration()
  }
  var rtcConfig = {...config, {
    protocol: getSocketLocationFromProtocol().protocol,
    port: getSocketLocationFromProtocol().port,
    streamName: stream1,
    host: host
    app: app,
  }}

  return new red5prosdk.WHIPClient().init(rtcConfig)
}

Setup - RTCPublisher

In order to publish using an RTCPublisher, you first need to connect to the Stream Manager. The Stream Manager knows which origins are valid (part of a cluster) & available for publishing.

function requestOrigin(configuration) {
  var host = configuration.host
  var app = configuration.app
  var proxy = configuration.proxy
  var streamName = configuration.stream1
  var port = serverSettings.httpport.toString()
  var portURI = port.length > 0 ? ':' + port : ''
  var baseUrl = isSecure
    ? protocol + '://' + host
    : protocol + '://' + host + portURI
  var apiVersion = configuration.streamManagerAPI || '4.0'
  var url =
    baseUrl +
    '/streammanager/api/' +
    apiVersion +
    '/event/' +
    app +
    '/' +
    streamName +
    '?action=broadcast'
  return new Promise(function (resolve, reject) {
    fetch(url)
      .then(function (res) {
        if (
          res.headers.get('content-type') &&
          res.headers
            .get('content-type')
            .toLowerCase()
            .indexOf('application/json') >= 0
        ) {
          return res.json()
        } else {
          throw new TypeError('Could not properly parse response.')
        }
      })
      .then(function (json) {
        resolve(json.serverAddress)
      })
      .catch(function (error) {
        var jsonError =
          typeof error === 'string' ? error : JSON.stringify(error, null, 2)
        console.error(
          '[PublisherStreamManagerTest] :: Error - Could not request Origin IP from Stream Manager. ' +
            jsonError
        )
        reject(error)
      })
  })
}

The service returns a JSON object. In particular to note is the serverAddress attribute which will be the IP of the Origin server.

  "name": "<stream-name>",
  "scope": "<stream-scope>",
  "serverAddress": "<origin-host-address>",
  "region": "<region-code>"
}

Next we construct the configuration object for the publisher per supported protocol. Note that the proxy usage is applicable for rtc only. The origin address is set directly as host for rtmp publisher where as it is passed in through connectionParams for rtc.

Another important to note is that for rtc publisher the target application is the proxy - the streammanager webapp and not the app that you want to publish to. The rtc configuration passes the actual target application name in connectionParams as app.

function determinePublisher(serverAddress) {
  const { host, app, proxy, stream1 } = configuration
  var config = {...configuration,
    ...defaultConfiguration,
    ...getUserMediaConfiguration()
  }
  var rtcConfig = {...config, {
    protocol: getSocketLocationFromProtocol().protocol,
    port: getSocketLocationFromProtocol().port,
    streamName: stream1,
    host: host
    app: proxy,
    connectionParams: {
      host: serverAddress,
      app: app,
    },
  }}

  return new red5prosdk.RTCPublisher().init(rtcConfig)
}