Our WEDOS CD (Cloud Disk) service is growing in popularity. Last month we passed the 1000 active WEDOS CDs milestone and the service is still in testing and we don’t have detailed instructions on how to use it yet.
Each WEDOS CD is used in its own way. Some for backup, others for synchronizing documents between computers, sharing large files conveniently, or as an online replacement for an office suite. But WEDOS CD can do much more. It is a full-fledged online office that allows a team of people to move their work together to a much higher level of efficiency. We know it works because that’s how we work.
What we really missed in our online office, however, was the convenience and simplicity of video conferencing. When you have colleagues between two datacentres and some at home in a homeoffice, video conferencing is essential. You need to make appointments, edit documents, and the image sharing feature comes in handy.
We therefore started using the open source solution Jitsi, which combines all of the above. There is no need to install anything, just a regular web browser (preferably Chrome) and up to 75 people can talk in one room.
When we saw how much Jitsi was helping us, we thought that’s exactly what WEDOS CD needed. So we started experimenting with this open source solution on our servers and were surprised how effective it is.
What is Jitsi
Jitsi is an open source conference call solution with a very strong and growing community. By 2020, the number of users will have surpassed 10 million. It is built on simplicity and high security.
You don’t need anything to use it. Just visit meet.wedos.com, set up a room and invite others to join. If you need privacy, you can set a password for the room. A modern internet browser such as Chrome or the Jitsi app for mobile phones is sufficient for a comfortable video conference (you can also use the browser on your mobile phone). So are PC apps, but on a PC a browser is sufficient. That’s all. No installation, registration required or anything like that.
Nothing needs to be set up in the interface itself for normal communication. Everything is optimised for each connected user individually. Anyone who wants to can add a name.
Jitsi also includes chat with the ability to send private messages, share a program window, monitor or the entire desktop. You can also connect Jitsi to YouTube and use it to stream conferences. Jitsi also has a recording function, but we have disabled that for now.
Security and GDPR compliance first
Jitsi has one literally fascinating asset if you need to talk in pairs. After the server-client communication is established, it passes the communication to the client-client (peer-to-peer (P2P)). The control server then just makes sure that everything works as it should. The communication itself does not go through the server at all, but if possible between the individual participants. This is the state under ideal conditions, also the browser must be able to do this (for example Google Chrome).
This allows people who are on the intranet, for example, to communicate with each other in high resolution and with people outside to communicate in lower resolution. It works very well even within a single local ISP. Packets always try to find the best and shortest path 🙂
This competitive advantage proves to be crucial, as most of the teams are from the same region or city. Similarly, it works well for online learning. The students and the teacher are mostly from nearby. And who is further away, the tribute will be a bit “blurry” for others.
Because the communication doesn’t go through our servers, we can’t eavesdrop on it even if we wanted to, and we still save money on transmissions. Well don’t take it 🙂
As far as the actual traffic is concerned, we only log what we are legally required to log and we do not plan to change this in the future. The Jitsi concept complies with GDPR and from our side the traffic only goes through our servers in the WEDOS 1 Datacentre in Hluboká Nad Vltavou. In addition, the transmissions are encrypted.
In addition, End To End Encryption is available as a beta feature, so you can encrypt traffic beyond HTTPS. We tested this feature for the latest version of Google Chrome. Windows users must specifically enable it in the settings. These are Experimental Web Platform features. In Chrome, you can find it if you paste it into the address bar:
chrome://flags/#enable-experimental-web-platform-features
According to the official website, any browser with Chromium 83 and higher (Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Brave and Opera) can do this.
All participants with End To End Encryption enabled will then be able to communicate with each other normally. The others will only see this:
Free for everyone
When we found out how unpretentious the service is (currently we could handle a few thousand subscribers at a time and if we add a few servers we can handle hundreds of thousands of subscribers at the same time), we decided to make it free to WEDOS CDs in some limited extent at least. More advanced functionality, such as video recording, would be added to the paid version of the WEDOS CD. There is already more load on the servers, because the recordings are saved in mp4 format and each recording uses almost the entire CPU thread.
So if you need a modern system for conference video calls or online learning, it will be free of charge. Same for family calls, chatting with friends over a beer, etc.
And lest we forget. Online demonstrations will also be organized through our system. Just have the speakers in one room and connect the room to an online streaming service like YouTube (it’s not complicated). Then you can comply with all the regulations and from the comfort of your home demonstrate for anything and against anything. Plus, YouTube will give you a nice count of all the participants, so you’ll have numbers for the media too 😉
So come check it out: