How to enable VoIP relaying on your Home Server with TURN
The synapse Matrix Home Server supports integration with TURN server via the TURN server REST API (http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-uberti-behave-turn-rest-00). This allows the Home Server to generate credentials that are valid for use on the TURN server through the use of a secret shared between the Home Server and the TURN server.
This document describes how to install coturn (https://github.com/coturn/coturn) which also supports the TURN REST API, and integrate it with synapse.
You may be able to setup coturn via your package manager, or set it up manually using the usual configure, make, make install
process.
Check out coturn:
git clone https://github.com/coturn/coturn.git coturn cd coturnConfigure it:
./configureYou may need to install
libevent2
: if so, you should do so in the way recommended by your operating system. You can ignore warnings about lack of database support: a database is unnecessary for this purpose.Build and install it:
make make installCreate or edit the config file in
/etc/turnserver.conf
. The relevant lines, with example values, are:lt-cred-mech use-auth-secret static-auth-secret=[your secret key here] realm=turn.myserver.orgSee turnserver.conf for explanations of the options. One way to generate the static-auth-secret is with pwgen:
pwgen -s 64 1Consider your security settings. TURN lets users request a relay which will connect to arbitrary IP addresses and ports. At the least we recommend:
# VoIP traffic is all UDP. There is no reason to let users connect to arbitrary TCP endpoints via the relay. no-tcp-relay
# don't let the relay ever try to connect to private IP address ranges within your network (if any) # given the turn server is likely behind your firewall, remember to include any privileged public IPs too. denied-peer-ip=10.0.0.0-10.255.255.255 denied-peer-ip=192.168.0.0-192.168.255.255 denied-peer-ip=172.16.0.0-172.31.255.255
# special case the turn server itself so that client->TURN->TURN->client flows work allowed-peer-ip=10.0.0.1
# consider whether you want to limit the quota of relayed streams per user (or total) to avoid risk of DoS. user-quota=12 # 4 streams per video call, so 12 streams = 3 simultaneous relayed calls per user. total-quota=1200
Ideally coturn should refuse to relay traffic which isn't SRTP; see matrix-org#2009
Ensure your firewall allows traffic into the TURN server on the ports you've configured it to listen on (remember to allow both TCP and UDP TURN traffic)
If you've configured coturn to support TLS/DTLS, generate or import your private key and certificate.
Start the turn server:
bin/turnserver -o
Your home server configuration file needs the following extra keys:
- "turn_uris": This needs to be a yaml list of public-facing URIs for your TURN server to be given out to your clients. Add separate entries for each transport your TURN server supports.
- "turn_shared_secret": This is the secret shared between your Home server and your TURN server, so you should set it to the same string you used in turnserver.conf.
- "turn_user_lifetime": This is the amount of time credentials generated by your Home Server are valid for (in milliseconds). Shorter times offer less potential for abuse at the expense of increased traffic between web clients and your home server to refresh credentials. The TURN REST API specification recommends one day (86400000).
- "turn_allow_guests": Whether to allow guest users to use the TURN
server. This is enabled by default, as otherwise VoIP will not work reliably for guests. However, it does introduce a security risk as it lets guests connect to arbitrary endpoints without having gone through a CAPTCHA or similar to register a real account.
As an example, here is the relevant section of the config file for matrix.org:
turn_uris: [ "turn:turn.matrix.org:3478?transport=udp", "turn:turn.matrix.org:3478?transport=tcp" ] turn_shared_secret: n0t4ctuAllymatr1Xd0TorgSshar3d5ecret4obvIousreAsons turn_user_lifetime: 86400000 turn_allow_guests: True
Now, restart synapse:
cd /where/you/run/synapse ./synctl restart
...and your Home Server now supports VoIP relaying!