In-game VOIP implementation questions

[rurounijones]

I noticed that one of the reasons given for the variable performance of the In-Game VOIP at launch was not enough TURN servers and that ED were bringing more online to compensate. From

Quote

Voice Chat. Unable to transmit over Voice Chat. We will be expanding the number of TURN servers, but also please bear in mind that some servers may not have Voice Chat enabled and kindly check that your frequency, encryption, and microphone are set up correctly.

For anyone reading along, think of a TURN server as a VOIP host server that the audio network traffic gets routed through like in a traditional client/server setup, although the WebRTC protocol ED users is peer2peer by default the reality of the internet makes this less than usable so TURN servers are needed so that data can flow between clients.

This was a bit of a surprise to me and has raised a number of questions in my head regarding the implementation of DCS VOIP that I would appreciate if ED could answer, @BIGNEWY, @NineLine.

1.  Centrally Hosted?
Can ED confirm if it centrally hosts all TURN servers and that a community DCS server (e.g. a Hoggit server, an Enigma server) is not the server through which the radio network traffic is routed when TURN server option is enabled in the client.

The following questions depend on the answer to 1 being "Yes, they are centrally hosted" so the following may not need answering.

2. Privacy Policy:
What is the privacy policy at ED specifically regarding the handling of this audio traffic. Does ED do anything apart from route it to other clients. e.g. Does ED record or save the audio traffic.
3. Self-hosted
Will ED allow community servers (e.g. Hoggit, Enigma) to run their own TURN servers, have control over them, and be able to have clients connect to them instead of the central ones via a server config setting that is read by clients.
4. Geographic Distribution
Are the TURN servers geographically distributed? (e.g. are Australian players, playing on an Australian DCS server, having their audio traffic routed through a local Australian TURN server or is the traffic going half-way around the planet to servers in the US or example)
5. Design
This one is more out of curiosity but why did ED go with a centrally managed setup? It increases costs to ED since they now have to pay for and maintain these servers when the DCS community servers are largely sitting idle in terms of spare CPU and RAM and could run them instead.

Edited January 14 by rurounijones

[Hotdognz]

Great questions, interested to see the answers if you get them.

Sent from my TB350FU using Tapatalk

[rurounijones]

@BIGNEWY@NineLine - Any news? There are still threads being posted (e.g. the one below) where the answer still seems to be "We are adding more TURN servers"

[BIGNEWY]

2 hours ago, rurounijones said:

@BIGNEWY@NineLine - Any news? There are still threads being posted (e.g. the one below) where the answer still seems to be "We are adding more TURN servers"

More turn servers were added and we have seen improvement, we have been running servers with large numbers of voice users. More tweaks will come in future patches.

thanks 

[ACS_Dev]

6 hours ago, BIGNEWY said:

More turn servers were added and we have seen improvement, we have been running servers with large numbers of voice users. More tweaks will come in future patches.

thanks 

This is very nice and I haven't had any issues for a little while now. I just wish we would have been told about this, it would have helped convince my friends to give it another go and hopefully boosted adoption among the playerbase.

[rurounijones]

14 hours ago, BIGNEWY said:

More turn servers were added and we have seen improvement, we have been running servers with large numbers of voice users. More tweaks will come in future patches.

thanks 

While that is nice to hear; it doesn't answer most of the questions in my original post. Could you have a look at them?

2. Privacy Policy:
3. Self-hosted
4. Geographic Distribution
5. Design
 

Edited January 3 by rurounijones

[Aarnoman]

+1 @BIGNEWY would also like an official response to the above questions from @rurounijones.

[BIGNEWY]

On 10/22/2023 at 11:24 AM, rurounijones said:

1.  Centrally Hosted?
Can ED confirm if it centrally hosts all TURN servers and that a community DCS server (e.g. a Hoggit server, an Enigma server) is not the server through which the radio network traffic is routed when TURN server option is enabled in the client.

The following questions depend on the answer to 1 being "Yes, they are centrally hosted" so the following may not need answering.

2. Privacy Policy:
What is the privacy policy at ED specifically regarding the handling of this audio traffic. Does ED do anything apart from route it to other clients. e.g. Does ED record or save the audio traffic.
3. Self-hosted
Will ED allow community servers (e.g. Hoggit, Enigma) to run their own TURN servers, have control over them, and be able to have clients connect to them instead of the central ones via a server config setting that is read by clients.
4. Geographic Distribution
Are the TURN servers geographically distributed? (e.g. are Australian players, playing on an Australian DCS server, having their audio traffic routed through a local Australian TURN server or is the traffic going half-way around the planet to servers in the US or example)
5. Design
This one is more out of curiosity but why did ED go with a centrally managed setup? It increases costs to ED since they now have to pay for and maintain these servers when the DCS community servers are largely sitting idle in terms of spare CPU and RAM and could run them instead.

Sorry for the late reply 

1. Yes, Turn servers are centrally hosted by ED only.
2. ED doesn't save the traffic. There are no plans for it. If we will change the policy, the statement will be provided.
3. No, ED do not plan to provide self-hosted Turn servers.
4. Yes, Turn servers are designed to be distributed if needed.
5. Easy to manage and maintain for us especially at current stage of implementation.

hope that answers the questions. 

thanks

[rurounijones]

@BIGNEWY Thank you for the information, based on that just a few follow-up clarification requests.

> 2. ED doesn't save the traffic. There are no plans for it. If we will change the policy, the statement will be provided.

Just to be clear since a lot of people asked me about this with OverlordBot:  Does ED do anything with the voice data apart from route it to other DCS customer owned game clients? (e.g. does it stream it to an AI for training etc. This can be done without technically saving anything. Hence the specific phrasing of the question).
Ideally the answer to this would be "ED does not do anything with the voice data apart from routing it between customer owned DCS game clients".

> 4. Yes, Turn servers are designed to be distributed if needed.

Understood but my question was more, are they currently geographically distributed rather than can they be. If they are not, for example, how does ED decide when servers are required in a specific region (e.g. Australia). Does ED even have the metrics and insight to know where traffic is coming from / going to, how much it is, and where a geographically distributed TURN server cluster would provide a better customer experience..

Edited January 16 by rurounijones

[BIGNEWY]

1 hour ago, rurounijones said:

> 2. ED doesn't save the traffic. There are no plans for it. If we will change the policy, the statement will be provided.

Just to be clear since a lot of people asked me about this with OverlordBot:  Does ED do anything with the voice data apart from route it to other DCS customer owned game clients? (e.g. does it stream it to an AI for training etc. This can be done without technically saving anything. Hence the specific phrasing of the question).
Ideally the answer to this would be "ED does not do anything with the voice data apart from routing it between customer owned DCS game clients".

ED does not do anything with the voice data apart from routing it between customer owned DCS game clients

1 hour ago, rurounijones said:

> 4. Yes, Turn servers are designed to be distributed if needed.

Understood but my question was more, are they currently geographically distributed rather than can they be.

It is a distributed network already

 

thanks

[98abaile]

The obvious question should be: Why are ED using turn servers rather than letting the game servers handle their own VoIP data?

[rurounijones]

On 2/5/2024 at 9:24 PM, 98abaile said:

The obvious question should be: Why are ED using turn servers rather than letting the game servers handle their own VoIP data?

That is a head-scratcher but ED will ED