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Comment by EGreg | Hacker News Reader

OK big question

If Jitsi doesn't require a user account, how do they prevent a bunch of random bots using up all their resources with sybil attacks?

How do they pay for all that bandwidth, for TURN servers etc?

What are the economics of it basically

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It probably does STUN but not TURN and relies on the actual data going through P2P, that's what most services that are free do and for a lot of orgs/cases it works pretty well.

This, there's no MCU either, all P2P

So with no TURN, how does Jitsi work with people behind a firewall / NAT?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STUN

I don't think you understand my question. STUN is only for setting up the connection. With Trickle ICE etc. But after that, who actually proxies the video that is being sent between the WebRTC endpoints? You need TURN servers for that! Without them, people behind a firewall wouldn't be able to actually receive any audio/video streams from Jitsi. So how would it work without TURN?

> people behind a firewall wouldn't be able to actually receive any audio/video streams from Jitsi.

That part isn't really correct? Most firewalls block incoming connections not outgoing ones so both parties agree on a port, hole punching happens and then there is a connection is formed.

Probably by using public ones https://dev.to/aprogrammer22/list-of-free-stun-and-turn-serv...

Being self hosted reduces a lot of that problem.

We're asking about their central servers, if they don't require an account to be set up, how do they prevent sybil attacks?

What are the economics of a bunch of random bots using up all their resources with sybil attacks?

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