What next for meet.vpsfree.cz: new software and hardware

When you launch a new service, you have to look after it. Sometimes, it quickly turns out to be more complicated than you thought.

Two weeks ago, we launched a videoconferencing server at meet.vpsfree.cz. It turned out to bring plenty of headaches.

Once again, it turns out that "stable" is not stable at all. What it really means is "the developer has no idea what they did yesterday,
let alone remembers anything from two years ago." In other words, the stable version has no support and was abandoned long ago. That is the main problem.

There is no documentation explaining any of it, just a big mess. The Git repositories are the only source of truth. But you need the current version for that.

So in the end, we decided to build everything from current Git versions and maintain it that way. Among other things, this should reduce CPU load.

They might have mentioned a small detail like the "stable" version only supporting encryption through the very weak DTLS 1.0 protocol... Lovely. A mountain of work.

So we are working on deploying the whole thing again from scratch, and doing it better. Removing disconnected contacts will then work properly. We cannot get that working with the old Prosody.

We have also ordered some new hardware that should hopefully arrive on Friday. By next Monday, we should be able to handle a very different number of users.

In any case, we will probably remain cautious about wider promotion. The main thing is that it works for members and their families when we want to call one another. We will prepare it for scaling this week, then see who can contribute what hardware.

We will probably launch videobridges in other networks wherever possible. FIT CTU, SiliconHill and Faster have so far said they could provide some remote hardware. But first,
we need to sort out this basic installation.