Optimization Tips

Network Traffic Optimization

Below we describe some important approaches to optimize network traffic.

Disable Transmission

Muting your own microphone while not speaking in a call is not only great for the organization, it is also one of the most effective traffic optimization. If your app / game is fine with this kind of restriction, you should look into controlling the transmission per user.

Voice Activity Detection

Photon Voice has an option to detect when a user is talking to skip sending any data when there is no voice activity.
This can work quite well but depends a lot on the individual user, microphone and calibration.
It is worth a try to optimize traffic. Look into Voice Activity Detection (VAD).

Interest Groups

Receiving the audio/videa streams from a other users makes up most of the traffic for a client. At the same time, it takes up some processing time to decode the stream.

You can use Interest Groups to organize who is hearing whom. With the right combination, users hear the speakers in a call or the users close-by but skip streams of users who are our of bounds or not if interest.

BitRate

The bitrate for a stream can be configured per Recorder. It directly affects the resulting network traffic but also the quality of the audio and video. With our default, we leaned towards quality over traffic. A lower bitrate only reduces the network traffic when there is some activity on the stream.

Frame Duration

The Frame Duration is a minor factor for the amount of data being sent and received.
Shorter frames are sent more frequently and the amount of headers becomes larger for the stream. Longer frames mean a longer delay.
40ms to 60ms frames are a good compromise.