livekit-server

README

LiveKit - Open source, distributed video/audio rooms over WebRTC

LiveKit is an open source project that provides scalable, multi-user conferencing over WebRTC. It's designed to give you everything you need to build real time video/audio capabilities in your applications.

Features

• Horizontally scalable WebRTC Selective Forwarding Unit (SFU)
• Modern, full-featured client SDKs for JS, iOS, Android
• Built for production - JWT authentication and server APIs
• Robust networking & connectivity, over UDP & TCP
• Easy to deploy, a single binary and only three ports to forward.
• Advanced features - simulcasting, selective subscription, moderation APIs.

Documentation & Guides

Docs & Guides at: https://docs.livekit.io

SDKs & APIs

Client SDKs:

• Javascript (docs)
• iOS - Swift (docs)
• Android - Kotlin (docs)

Server APIs:

• Javascript (docs)
• Go (docs)

Installing

From source

Ensure Go 1.15+ is installed, and GOPATH/bin is in your PATH.

git clone https://github.com/livekit/livekit-server
cd livekit-server
./bootstrap.sh
mage

Docker

LiveKit is published to Docker Hub under livekit/livekit-server

Running

Creating API keys

LiveKit utilizes JWT based access tokens for authentication to all of its APIs. Because of this, the server needs a list of valid API keys and secrets to validate the provided tokens. For more, see Authentication.

Generate API key/secret pairs with:

./bin/livekit-server generate-keys

or

docker run --rm livekit/livekit-server:v0.9 generate-keys

Store the generate keys in a YAML file like:

APIwLeah7g4fuLYDYAJeaKsSE: 8nTlwISkb-63DPP7OH4e.nw.J44JjicvZDiz8J59EoQ+

Starting the server

In development mode, LiveKit has no external dependencies. With the key file ready, you can start LiveKit with

./bin/livekit-server --key-file <path/to/keyfile> --dev

or

docker run --rm -e LIVEKIT_KEYS="<key>: <secret>" livekit/livekit-server:v0.9 --dev

the --dev flag turns on log verbosity to make it easier for local debugging/development

Sample client

client-sdk-js contains a web sample client that can connect to your server locally.

Clone the repo and run yarn sample

Creating a JWT token

To create a join token for clients, livekit-server provides a convenient subcommand to create a development token. This token has an expiration of a month, which is useful for development & testing, but not appropriate for production use.

./bin/livekit-server --key-file <path/to/keyfile> create-join-token --room "myroom" --identity "myidentity"

Deploying for production

LiveKit is deployable to any environment that supports docker, including Kubernetes and Amazon ECS.

LiveKit is distributed, and scales by adding nodes. Different server instances coordinate via Redis to ensure clients in the same room are served by the same instance. Redis is the only external dependency for a production deployment.

See documentation at https://docs.livekit.io/guides/deploy

License

LiveKit server is licensed under AGPL v3.0.

APIs & Protocol

livekit-server provides two primary services, a Room service that allows for room management and participant moderation, and RTC service to handle WebRTC communications.

Room APIs are defined in room.proto. Room APIs are in HTTP, built with Twirp and follows its the conventions.

The RTC service provides the signaling and everything else when the client interacts with the room.