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Issues with fgcom.flightgear.org

FGCom is a realtime voice communication system specially designed for FlightGear.

Issues with fgcom.flightgear.org

Postby Secret_Hamster » Wed Oct 23, 2013 8:42 pm

I'm not sure if it's just my connection to where ever the server is, but I've definitely noticed a lower quality on the newer server.

In addition today (23/10/2013 at 19:40 UTC) I'm getting really poor quality at EGKK on 118.950. I had to restart because one of the other users said the quality was too low.

I had to restart about 4 times to get both channels on OpenRadar to connect. It's still not good quality. Do we know why this is? Are we deliberately using less bandwidth? Or is there an issue with jitter?

I have checked my system, it's not doing anything, memory use is low. I'm not seeing any other delays in internet speed.
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Re: Issues with fgcom.flightgear.org

Postby F-JJTH » Wed Oct 23, 2013 8:56 pm

Hi,

I'm monitoring my internet connection and I'm at 40% of the connection bandwidth.
However I can see that someone is doing an echo test since more than 1 hour !!!!! This is absolutely not expected and can reduce the performance (renceiving/transmitting the voice continuously is not a normal use of FGCom)
If you know who is doing this "TestFg" can you tell him it's unnecessary to test his voice during 1 hour ? I don't see where it help this user to get the echo test during 1 hour contunuously :/

Regards,
Clément
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Re: Issues with fgcom.flightgear.org

Postby F-JJTH » Thu Oct 24, 2013 11:30 am

For information I've modified the codec who is used for audio compression. We are now using Speex codec.
This one is the better one, however he is also the one who require a lot of CPU and a lot of bandwidth.
This codec has a "voice detection" feature, so the transmission is stopped when no one is talking (which reduce the bandwidth) but he is using a lot of bitrate when transmitting (which increase al lot the bandwidth!)
Also this codec has a denoiser feature and is encoding in VBR.

If it appears this codec is the only one who is acceptable my server won't have the power to manage more than 4 users at same time ! (Yes this codec increases really CPU/bandwidth consumption)
With the old GSM codec my server was able to manage up to 40 users at same time.

I would be happy to test this new codec with you this evening. You must update your FG GIT installation because changes are on client and server side.

https://gitorious.org/fg/flightgear/com ... aeca9ff938

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Clément
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Re: Issues with fgcom.flightgear.org

Postby adrian » Thu Oct 24, 2013 1:39 pm

F-JJTH wrote in Thu Oct 24, 2013 11:30 am:If it appears this codec is the only one who is acceptable my server won't have the power to manage more than 4 users at same time ! (Yes this codec increases really CPU/bandwidth consumption)
With the old GSM codec my server was able to manage up to 40 users at same time.

Regards,
Clément


This is really weird, since Speex is capable of going as low as 2.6 kbps bitrate (I don't know about the processing power).
What values have you tried for SPEEX_SET_QUALITY, SPEEX_SET_BITRATE and SPEEX_SET_SAMPLING_RATE?
I'm fairly sure I used Speex with 3 kbps or less before, while GSM is somewhat like 12 kbps. I'd look at tuning the audio sampling rate (I don't think you need more than 8000 for voice) and the values mentioned in the Speex docs: http://www.speex.org/docs/manual/speex- ... ity_vs_bps

Let's hack a bit the Iaxclient defaults, since I'm not sure what they're optimised for. The constants I mentioned are in <libspeex/include/speex/speex.h>
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Re: Issues with fgcom.flightgear.org

Postby zakalawe » Thu Oct 24, 2013 3:17 pm

Without being an audio expert at all, I would observe that if we are using a codec that doesn't do detection of silence/non-data and reduce sending bandwidth to almost zero, we are crazy, since the ratio of time listening to time transmitting on FGCom is probably 9:1 or 99:1
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Re: Issues with fgcom.flightgear.org

Postby F-JJTH » Fri Oct 25, 2013 11:29 pm

Hi,

It seems that my first conclusion about Speex codec was wrong. In fact my server is now running a Jenkins slave and I was confusing in bandwidth analyses.
Finally Speex seems to be able to reduce the bandwidth to 0Kbs when nobody is talking.

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Re: Issues with fgcom.flightgear.org

Postby Gijs » Sat Oct 26, 2013 10:45 am

Excellent, that's how we like it! ;-)
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Re: Issues with fgcom.flightgear.org

Postby Secret_Hamster » Mon Oct 28, 2013 9:31 pm

I've noticed improvements. Though occasionally I still seem to have the odd connection issue. I'm just about to recompile, and perhaps a quick test after.
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Re: Issues with fgcom.flightgear.org

Postby Secret_Hamster » Wed Oct 30, 2013 11:26 pm

I'm sad to report I've had issues with fgcom.flightgear.org again tonight.

There was just three of us on there and at times it really seemed to struggle.

I would therefore recommend we revert to delta again.

It's sad as the extra features to remap things like 124.220 to 124.225 are great features.
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Re: Issues with fgcom.flightgear.org

Postby Praxxus » Sat Nov 02, 2013 11:24 pm

Just to confirm same issues tonight at EDDF - choppy/broken communication with fgcom. I am on flightgear.org ( the new standard for fgcom ? ) EDDF reported using both servers ? Dont get that - I thought 1 or the other. Send back please.
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Re: Issues with fgcom.flightgear.org

Postby F-JJTH » Sun Nov 03, 2013 12:31 am

I'm currently searching for an efficient Asterisk hosting. As you know FlightGear is developed by volontary people like me, and I'm not ready to pay $90 per months for a server.
Today there is delta384.server4you.de, but as stated by the maintainer of this server: if usage still increasing he will close his server.

Since FGCom will become easier to use with FG 3.0, the number of FGCom users will increase for sure, so delta384.server4you.de will be closed, then FGCom will be unusable since there is no more FGCom server.

If someone here has a server with unlimited traffic, and a 100Mb/s bandwith, and able to install Asterisk, please raise your hand !
or
If someone here is ready to pay $90 per month for a server, please raise your hand !

I will be happy help the one who provide a server to install and maintain the server.

Finally what is the state of FGCom server today ?
1) delta384.server4you.de will be closed because the number of FGCom users is increasing
2) fgcom.flightgear.org is the next generation of FGCom server, he works fine (technically), but he requires to be hosted on a server with unlimited traffic + high bandwidth

fgcom.flightgear.org was designed for testing (as stated in the Newsletter of August) because some new features had to be tested. Now all features have been tested, everything is working as expected. The only missing thing is a server hosting this new generation of FGCom server.

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Clément
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Re: Issues with fgcom.flightgear.org

Postby jomo » Sun Nov 03, 2013 9:06 am

Praxxus wrote in Sat Nov 02, 2013 11:24 pm:Just to confirm same issues tonight at EDDF - choppy/broken communication with fgcom. I am on flightgear.org ( the new standard for fgcom ? ) EDDF reported using both servers ? Dont get that - I thought 1 or the other. Send back please.

All (that want to talk to each other) need to be on one server! And very definitely we at EDDF use ONLY "delta384.server4you.de" (at least during the announced ATC-events, see http://www.emmerich-j.de/EDDF/ )
Still would be interesting to know at what UTC-time that happened. (And maybe who was in ctrl)

In addition: At least in the evening I experienced a lot of "hangs" in my ATC-ML (MPserver depend) Camera-application. May be the MPservers had some interconnection problems again. But as long as that gets better DayToDay (now even showing the EDDF 4th runway on MPmap!) - that is all-right for me.
thx for info
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Re: Issues with fgcom.flightgear.org

Postby Secret_Hamster » Sun Nov 10, 2013 8:44 pm

I'd hoped that I would be able to put up my hand at somepoint. I work for a hosting company, but in the current climate, they're not willing to throw away 100Mbits of bandwidth at no charge, along with power costs.

If someone could give me a spec of a computer I could at least look at seeing what I may be able to get out of the the pile of computers that are being removed, for soemthing suitbale for the future.
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Re: Issues with fgcom.flightgear.org

Postby F-JJTH » Sun Nov 10, 2013 10:20 pm

Thanks you for looking at this. Assterisk doesn't require a lot of performance, a dual-core with 2Go of RAM is enough.

I've recently forced Speex codec on server side on fgcom.flightgear.org, that way every client are forced to use Speex codec (or converted to Speex if not supported on client side). This add a small jitter (20ms) but largely improve the bandwidth usage !! Before the change I was able to handle 8~10 users at same time, now I should be able to manage 50~60 users at same time.
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