Chrome issues to pass the echo test & solutions
Published on December 27, 2021 by Wouter Tebbens
Dear members,
we know that many people have been suffering audio connection issues lately. As still most people could continue life through our commons-cooperative online meeting service as usual, it was clear that this wasn't a server-side issue.
Indeed, we found that many Chrome users were having these issues. In fact people using the latest version of Chrome (at least on Android and on Windows) couldn't pass the echo test and therefore could only join a room without their audio connected. They were receiving either a timeout error or a “1006” error from the BigBlueButton HTML5 client.
The first solution people started practicing was to switch browsers; Firefox and Edge (on Windows) and Safari on Apple's iOS continued working as usual. Of course, Google's Chrome is the dominant browser nowadays, so this is clearly not a very convenient solution.
Meet.coop's tech.circle found the reason of Chrome having these issues: in their most recent update they (Google) deprecated the support for the WebRTC method our servers have been relying on for audio connections. The latest version of BigBlueButton furtunately caters for this and provides a working solution for Chrome. See more details in this forum thread.
Just before Christmas we deployed a new server in Germany. While it isn't fully customised yet as we want it to be, it provides a working solution. You can test it for yourself here. We invite meetcoop members to set up a temporary account on this server so you can organise your meetings in the coming weeks. Our objective is to migrate our servers and user data to the new one in January. Until then feel free to use this temporary server in Germany.
We are sorry for the inconveniences this has caused. We hope to see you in the New Year with renewed strength and energy.
warm regards,
Wouter
we know that many people have been suffering audio connection issues lately. As still most people could continue life through our commons-cooperative online meeting service as usual, it was clear that this wasn't a server-side issue.
Indeed, we found that many Chrome users were having these issues. In fact people using the latest version of Chrome (at least on Android and on Windows) couldn't pass the echo test and therefore could only join a room without their audio connected. They were receiving either a timeout error or a “1006” error from the BigBlueButton HTML5 client.
The first solution people started practicing was to switch browsers; Firefox and Edge (on Windows) and Safari on Apple's iOS continued working as usual. Of course, Google's Chrome is the dominant browser nowadays, so this is clearly not a very convenient solution.
Meet.coop's tech.circle found the reason of Chrome having these issues: in their most recent update they (Google) deprecated the support for the WebRTC method our servers have been relying on for audio connections. The latest version of BigBlueButton furtunately caters for this and provides a working solution for Chrome. See more details in this forum thread.
Just before Christmas we deployed a new server in Germany. While it isn't fully customised yet as we want it to be, it provides a working solution. You can test it for yourself here. We invite meetcoop members to set up a temporary account on this server so you can organise your meetings in the coming weeks. Our objective is to migrate our servers and user data to the new one in January. Until then feel free to use this temporary server in Germany.
We are sorry for the inconveniences this has caused. We hope to see you in the New Year with renewed strength and energy.
warm regards,
Wouter