BACK

How to Optimize Jitsi Prosody for Large-Scale Deployments

12 min Avkash Kakdiya

Big video conferencing setups need a solid backend that handles signaling and media well. Prosody is the XMPP server under Jitsi Meet that manages communication among clients and components. When you’re scaling from a handful of users to hundreds or thousands, tuning Jitsi Meet prosody becomes essential. Skip it, and you’ll see lag, dropped calls, or late messages.

Whether you’re just starting with Jitsi, a business owner curious about how it all works, or an agency offering white-label tools, this guide shows you how to get the best from Prosody for jitsi scaling and better prosody performance. We’ll cover the API basics, some UI tips, branding ideas, example tweaks, and point you to great resources to keep things steady and scalable.

1. API Overview

Prosody is an XMPP server built with Lua that handles real-time messages and signaling in Jitsi Meet. When someone joins a meeting, their client talks to Prosody, which manages messaging, presence, authentication, and ties participant info with Jicofo (the conference focus) and videobridge servers that handle media.

Key APIs and Modules

Prosody works in modules, which you can tune for better scaling. Focus on these:

  • mod_muc: Manages multi-user chat rooms — where participant info and signaling happen.
  • mod_bosh and mod_websocket: Connect XMPP over HTTP and websockets, important for web clients.
  • mod_pubsub: Broadcasts events like participant status updates.
  • mod_auth_internal_hashed: Local user auth, but big deployments should consider external auth plugins.

For scaling, the key is routing messages efficiently and supporting clustering or horizontal scaling. Prosody can cluster using external tools like Redis or database backends to share state.

Real-world Insight:

Just throwing more CPU and RAM at one server doesn’t cut it when you have 10,000+ users. A big university switched to offloading state info to Redis (using mod_mam and mod_pubsub) and boosted message distribution by 40%. That cut down signaling delays noticeably.

API Optimization Tips

  • Use async modules to avoid blocking I/O.
  • Disable unused modules to save CPU and memory.
  • Keep an eye on BOSH and websocket connections—they’re common bottlenecks.
  • Enable mod_stats for helpful monitoring.

2. UI Elements

Prosody doesn’t control the UI directly, but its performance shapes how smooth the UI feels. When actions like joining, leaving, muting, or screen sharing happen, the client sends signaling messages via Prosody. If those lag, the UI will seem slow or out of sync.

Optimizing UI Responsiveness Through Prosody

Developers should watch how signaling flows:

  • Cut down message flooding by using presence stanzas efficiently.
  • Use rate limits to stop spikes from too many joins/leaves at once.
  • Stick to sticky sessions or session affinity in clustered setups to keep state synced fast.

Long-Tail Keyword Example

Improving Jitsi Meet prosody UI signaling performance depends on handling backpressure properly in the messaging pipeline. That’s something you can tune at the Prosody level.

Practical Advice for Agencies

If you provide white-labeled products, syncing UI tweaks with backend improvements helps maintain performance when loads rise. For example, hold off on heavy animations until signaling confirms the participant action went through.

3. Branding Options

Prosody itself isn’t about branding, but it affects it indirectly through custom auth, domain handling, and multi-tenant support.

Multi-Domain Support in Prosody

If you rebrand Jitsi Meet for multiple clients, Prosody lets you host several virtual domains. Each domain can stand for a client’s brand or space. This is key for white-label setups at scale.

Example:

VirtualHost "client1.example.com"
    modules_enabled = { "muc", "ping" }

VirtualHost "client2.example.com"
    modules_enabled = { "muc", "ping" }

Each domain gets its own auth and components, which reflect different branding and user experiences on the surface.

Integrating with Custom Auth

Use external auth like OAuth or LDAP with Prosody to offer branded, seamless logins. Businesses that want control and brand consistency need this.

Security and Trustworthiness

Branded setups must enforce TLS on Prosody, secure auth, and keep servers updated to protect privacy. Being clear about privacy and following compliance builds trust.

4. Example Customizations

Customizing Prosody for large-scale Jitsi means tweaking configs, modules, and hooking into system behavior.

Sample Tuning Steps for Performance

  1. Turn on mod_mam with a backend database for reliable message archiving.
  2. Move message storage to external DBs like MySQL or PostgreSQL for faster queries.
  3. Enable mod_carbon to sync messages across devices—handy in offices but watch traffic.
  4. Use cluster-friendly tools like Redis for pubsub and caches.
  5. Raise max stanza size and adjust connection timeouts to handle quick joins and signaling bursts.

Custom Lua Modules

You can write Lua scripts to extend Prosody — for example, auto-kick idle users or log special metrics.

Case Study: University Setup

One university running 1000+ simultaneous calls built a custom Prosody module that changed resource limits during peak times and sent alerts when signaling failed. This helped avoid outages.

Long-Tail Keyword Use

“Best practices for prosody performance tuning in Jitsi Meet” include disabling unused features and tweaking queue sizes.

5. Resources

To get deeper and keep your system sharp, check these out:

Conclusion

Optimizing Jitsi Meet prosody is key for large deployments. You get reliable signaling, lower latency, and better user experience even under heavy load. Knowing the APIs, managing UI signaling, supporting multi-domain branding, and tuning performance customizations lays a solid base for scaling.

Whether you’re new, running a business, or an agency, putting effort into prosody tuning pays off with smoother calls and happier users. Keep security and trust top of mind when customizing or scaling real-time tools.

Next step: audit your Prosody setup, spot bottlenecks, and apply these tuning tips. Stay connected to official docs and the community to keep your deployment solid and ready for what’s next.

Frequently Asked Questions

Jitsi Meet prosody is the XMPP server that manages signaling and real-time communication. It's the backbone for secure, scalable video calls.

Improve performance by tuning prosody’s modules, optimizing database use, enabling clustering, and scaling resources properly.

Typical issues include resource bottlenecks, message routing delays, bad clustering setups, and configs that cause call drops or lag.

Yes, but prosody optimization focuses on backend performance. UI and branding changes are done separately and complement backend tuning.

Start with official Jitsi docs, Prosody module repos, community forums, and tutorials for detailed info.

Need help with your Jitsi? Get in Touch!

Your inquiry could not be saved. Please try again.
Thank you! We have received your inquiry.
Get in Touch

Fill up this form and our team will reach out to you shortly

Let’s Build Your Secure, Scalable Video Conferencing Platform

From setup to scaling, our Jitsi experts are here to help.