Coming Soon: 3CX WebMeeting on Your Local Network or Cloud

[cobaltit]

Hello,

are there any Updates ?

Did you read any of the above posts? Local MCU will happen after v18, and v18 is still in alpha. So I would say at least 3 months, although I wouldn't be surprised if it slipped to next year.

 

[Ayia Napa George]

The reason I am asking is GDPR Compliance.

Neither Zoom, Teams or other popular solutions are compliant.

So it would be a strong "+" for 3CX if they were.


Despite missing things like:

• Support for Meetings with 200+ participants.
• Reliability in quality.
  We had good meetings with 100 people, but sometimes even 10 participants cause really bad quality and force us to give up / defer the meeting.
• Allow to "permanently BAN" participants who try to crush the meeting.
  (You can kick them, but they can Re-Login......)
• Music while waiting for the meeting to begin, or during coffee breaks.
  (Counter till the meeting starts again with background music)
• During conference pauses: Separate "rooms" where users can meet like they would do at a "on site conference" during coffee breaks. (Maybe replace the word room with tables in a bar to get the idea)
• Re-enable "squelch" level for microphone tuning.
  Noise level when the sound of the mic is transferred to the meeting.
  (On Laptops we often have the cooling fan as background noise, so we need to switch microphones on an off all the time.)
• Onboarding of participants for conferences like they do at on site conferences
  (Say hello, help them with their audio/video settings etc. before they join).
• We currently look at things like Jitsi, or https://www.edudip.com to get over 3CX limitations.
  My fear: 3CX meetings will be seen as "second class meetings" as Edudip offers more options.
  Which user want's to offer "second class" meetings?

 

[N_G]

@Ayia Napa George Sounds nice, but these types of features are not required in 99,9% of the meetings. Not the direction that we want to go. Well go right ahead and look at JITSI but its nothing compared to 3CX. Zoom is good indeed but its gonna cost you. Again most users dont need that level of features.

 

[FridayIT]

@Ayia Napa George Sounds nice, but these types of features are not required in 99,9% of the meetings. Not the direction that we want to go. Well go right ahead and look at JITSI but its nothing compared to 3CX. Zoom is good indeed but its gonna cost you. Again most users dont need that level of features.

We have taken a two stage approach in our organization to address this.

Everyone gets 3cx meetings with dial in as they are included in our licencing. Anyone who does frequent meetings can request Teams which provides additional functionality.

I myself don't need a dial in number for instance, so I simply use 3cx or teams (without dial in) depending on convenience.

Eventually I'm sure with continued development 3cx will continue to improve. For me, the biggest thing missing is improved audio quality and reliability. Other than that the platform meets most of our needs.

 

[N_G]

@FridayIT Audio quality for dial in will be massively improved in v18 update 1. It will be like a local call in your PBX. For larger companies such as banks and healthcare it should be noted that running your own MCU has massive advantages in terms of not having all your video conferences automatically recorded by Zoom or Microsoft. Of course smaller companies probably dont care about that.

 

[A.Takacs]

For larger companies such as banks and healthcare it should be noted that running your own MCU has massive advantages in terms of not having all your video conferences automatically recorded by Zoom or Microsoft. Of course smaller companies probably dont care about that.

That's was why I pushed a "boutique" law firm (10 lawyers + support staff) doing lots a “sensitve" arbitration to purchase 3CX. That was a few month before the feature was dropped, without much forewarning (at least to me).

It would be a great feature to recover it but I understand it has again been postponed. We have obviously found alternatives since.

 

[N_G]

The feature was never dropped, just delayed. Its not a trivial function. But yes feature will probably make it into 3CX in 2021...

 

[Ayia Napa George]

We have taken a two stage approach in our organization to address this.

Everyone gets 3cx meetings with dial in as they are included in our licencing. Anyone who does frequent meetings can request Teams which provides additional functionality,

I myself don't need a dial in number for instance, so I simply use 3cx or teams (without dial in) depending on convenience.

Eventually I'm sure with continued development 3cx will continue to improve. For me, the biggest thing missing is improved audio quality and reliability. Other than that the platform meets most of our needs.

Thanks FridayIT for the hint with 2 stage approach.
I appreciate your feedback.

Audio:
Full Ack, especially regarding dial in by phone, this is said to improve in upcoming V18.


Situation for us:
_If_ I wanted our users to use Teams, O365 or other MS Cloud stuff (which is non GDPR compliant), we would do so.
To me, this is not just a price tag question, it's a question of respect.

I don't like compainies MS Teams, Skype, Zoom, "Backdoor Webex", Google or other colab-spy-fancies, who do not respect our privacy. (Call me oldfashioned, I can live with it. )

My thoughts: Why should we pay money to somebody not respecting our privacy with arguments like "we can provide better service to you if we know exactly what you are doing all day long" ?
Do you feel good, paying money for being spyed on you "optimized" while you use the product?

We daily have contact with companies using software not respecting privacy / GDPR unintentionally.

I'm always happy to mention 3CX as an alternative to them despite of some 3CX weaknesses.



----------
Why Jitsi as "a backup":

1. Spontanious screen presentations / meetings during normal phone calls can be initiated like: "join me at meet.xyz.com/123george_or_whatever_comes_to_my_mind". No need for creating invitations upfront, or sending difficult links by mail and wait for the links to arrive.
   Quite a few people like that "backup" at our company.
   (I know, I could use my "personal 3CX meet dial in address", but this would always be only one person at a time.)
2. Install in 10 minutes (basic webconf install, no phone dial in lines configured).
3. Privacy and GDPR compliant, so no risk for the company.

 

[A.Takacs]

The feature was never dropped, just delayed. Its not a trivial function. But yes feature will probably make it into 3CX in 2021...

Well may I remind you (!) of the standalone, on premise, Webmeeting server that you were selling ? For all intent and purpose this was most definitely dropped (without warning for us, but I might have not seen or understood the implication of your roadmap at the time).

On premise Webmeeting WAS a feature (albeit a separate, yet integrated) of 3CX. At the time it was working reasonably well for our purpose. And it was dropped.

 

[FridayIT]

----------
Why Jitsi as "a backup":

1. Spontanious screen presentations / meetings during normal phone calls can be initiated like: "join me at meet.xyz.com/123george_or_whatever_comes_to_my_mind". No need for creating invitations upfront, or sending difficult links by mail and wait for the links to arrive.

As far as I'm aware 3CX allows multiple people to join with the meet now webmeeting link.

FYI: as a workaround, some people have created a "placeholder" extension that allows for a "meeting room" that multiple users use.

 

[antrill]

@Nick Galea - Any update on the on-prem MCU arrival? We have some trouble with sessions disconnecting / unable to re-join since V18, so I would appreciate an alternative to Cloud in that respect. Also, we have people in China, so VPN routing to our own MCU would be much easier than reverse-engineering the cloud IP subnets that grow / change constantly.

Thanks for the great product overall!
Andreas

 

[N_G]

We have made a lot of progress but we need a bit more time... A few more months. There should be no issues though with our mcus right now

 

[antrill]

Dear @Nick Galea
I would like to get an update on this topic. We have a complex setup with China and keep seeing problems with cloud MCUs, since they need to be constantly and manually updated in our VPN config.For a few weeks I have seen "Oops, something went wrong" when a user in China tries to join a web meeting. All MCUs and our 3cx instance are reachable through VPN from there. The same link works fine from Germany, so it must be some missing destination IP in our config. (I added every IP returned by nslookup -q=txt europe.3cx.net.)
The problem only occurs for some of the MCUs, like 51.210.220.191 (eu160-gra.3cx.net), possibly some more. It is handled like the other working ones, so I'm stumped. The workaround is to close and re-start the meeting until we get another MCU by chance, which is cumbersome. Again, from Germany, all the MCUs work fine.

Can you give current info on what might go on here? Can you tell me when the self-hosted MCU will be available?

Best regards,
Andreas

 

[NickD_3CX]

Dear @Nick Galea
I would like to get an update on this topic. We have a complex setup with China and keep seeing problems with cloud MCUs, since they need to be constantly and manually updated in our VPN config.For a few weeks I have seen "Oops, something went wrong" when a user in China tries to join a web meeting. All MCUs and our 3cx instance are reachable through VPN from there. The same link works fine from Germany, so it must be some missing destination IP in our config. (I added every IP returned by nslookup -q=txt europe.3cx.net.)
The problem only occurs for some of the MCUs, like 51.210.220.191 (eu160-gra.3cx.net), possibly some more. It is handled like the other working ones, so I'm stumped. The workaround is to close and re-start the meeting until we get another MCU by chance, which is cumbersome. Again, from Germany, all the MCUs work fine.

Can you give current info on what might go on here? Can you tell me when the self-hosted MCU will be available?

Best regards,
Andreas

Hi!

Recently we created an A Record that remains up-to-date with all MCU IPs, which is: qos.3cx.net
Query that and update always the list of IPs that you allow over the tunnel.

The only thing that I could think is in case the server you are querying the TXT or A Record from, is pulling the data from an ISP that has DNS Servers that cache responses for longer than what we set the TTL to (some providers ignore TTLs under 2-3 hours and forcefully make them 24h).

Try updating your list using the A record which contains all MCU IPs and let us know how it goes.

 

[antrill]

Hi Nick,
I will switch to using your new method with qos.3cx.net, but in this case it can't be the cause since I started the meeting and checked the MCU IP that is used in the networking info screen, it was 51.210.220.191 which already is allowed in the tunnel. I can also TCP-connect to it from a PC in China with telnet <IP> 443 but joining the meeting in Chrome does not work nonetheless. (I get to entering my name but when I click "Connect" it says "Oops something went wrong.) With another MCU it does work.
I don't know in detail which servers are accessed and what else might go wrong, which is why I hope it will become easier to maintain with a self-hosted MCU. Any ETA on that?

 

[NickD_3CX]

I don't know in detail which servers are accessed and what else might go wrong, which is why I hope it will become easier to maintain with a self-hosted MCU. Any ETA on that?

Currently I don't have a time frame I can share with you.

I will switch to using your new method with qos.3cx.net, but in this case it can't be the cause since I started the meeting and checked the MCU IP that is used in the networking info screen, it was 51.210.220.191 which already is allowed in the tunnel. I can also TCP-connect to it from a PC in China with telnet <IP> 443 but joining the meeting in Chrome does not work nonetheless. (I get to entering my name but when I click "Connect" it says "Oops something went wrong.) With another MCU it does work.

Please switch the method. If it does happen again, open a new thread int he Video Conferencing section:
https://www.3cx.com/community/forums/video-conferencing/

The information I would like to know is:

1. In Chrome, press F12 and go to the "Console" tab.
2. Click to join the meeting again and wait until the error appears again.
3. Take a full screen screenshot showing both the Console and the error on screen.
4. Also the Webmeeting link you used to join.

The above information send to me in a PM.
This way we could check what happened.

 

[A.Takacs]

The feature was never dropped, just delayed. Its not a trivial function. But yes feature will probably make it into 3CX in 2021...

A reasonable chance to see it in 22 ?

 

[N_G]

@A.Takacs Yes, we are working on it, we have already made very good progress. Cant give an ETA though but its not forgotten... I would hope earlier in 2022...

 

[weimerd]

@A.Takacs Yes, we are working on it, we have already made very good progress. Cant give an ETA though but its not forgotten... I would hope earlier in 2022...

Can't wait to get it

 

[antrill]

Hi!

Recently we created an A Record that remains up-to-date with all MCU IPs, which is: qos.3cx.net
Query that and update always the list of IPs that you allow over the tunnel.

The only thing that I could think is in case the server you are querying the TXT or A Record from, is pulling the data from an ISP that has DNS Servers that cache responses for longer than what we set the TTL to (some providers ignore TTLs under 2-3 hours and forcefully make them 24h).

Try updating your list using the A record which contains all MCU IPs and let us know how it goes.

Hello @NickD_3CX ,
I think I found the culprit in my case - I saw ICMP "need fragmentation" packets at a terminating gateway in Frankfurt directed to the problematic 3cx MCUs. I think some of them set "don't fragment" flags in their SSL server hello packets, which causes trouble with our smaller MTUs down the path due to encapsulation.
Will need to investigate further.One thing I noticed today:
Started a web meeting and looked at the connection stats page. It says at the top:
Server IP: 10.132.0.4:48025
(It's new to me to see a private IP here.)

And below:
Server-Info
Host: mcu-wmr-eu-00016.3cx.net
IP: 34.140.8.40
Land: BE Belgium


This IP 34.140.8.40 is not among those listed in the DNS record qos.3cx.net. Has there been another change to this mechanism?