VSee command line options
The online documentation for VSee describing its command line options and network traversal is sparse (see links below). The command line options have been extracted from the OSX binaries to form the list below.
Setting up the firewall to allow outgoing (egress) XMPP/Jabber (tcp port 522) and STUN (was 'Simple traversal of UDP through NAT' but now 'Session Traversal Utilities for NAT') is straightforward. However this doesn't address the requirements for sound/video.
Port mapping
VSee appears to setup some form of VPN over UDP between clients. Historically this may have been to UDP port 6000 (TODO: find some sort of description of this from VSee). It is unclear if one end can initiate this and datagrams can flow in both directions, or whether both ends independently initiate this flow (i.e if one end has a public IPv4 address or their NAT is setup correct then a direction VPN style connection can be established). These notes may be less applicable for clients that are behind a non-symmetric NAT.
There doesn't seem to be simple description of this from VSee but it appears that VSee will use up to 255 UDP port numbers in the range 6000-6254. It appears that a VSee client will listen on UDP port number '6000+X' where 'X' is the last octet of the IPv4 address of the interface address. e.g. If you machine has an internal IPv4 address of 192.168.1.34 then it will use a UDP port of 6034 for VSee voice/video traffic. This allows a very simple scheme for small networks of up to ~250 users to concurrently use VSee through a NAT firewall.
The NAT firewall (i.e. the router from your ISP) will need to have pinholes setup for the address range you are using.
e.g. the set of rules would be:
| Public UDP Port |
Private IPv4 Address |
Private UDP Port |
|---|---|---|
| 6001 | xx.yy.zz.1 i.e. 192.168.1.1 or 10.0.0.1 |
6001 |
| 6002 | xx.yy.zz.2 |
6002 |
| 6003 |
xx.yy.zz.3 |
6003 |
| ... |
... | ... |
| 6253 | xx.yy.zz.253 | 6253 |
| 6254 | xx.yy.zz.254 | 6254 |
where the private IPv4 address would be 192.168.1.xx or 10.0.0.xx (specific to your network).
NAT rules only have to be created for those address ranges where a client machines are on the network (i.e. you don't have to create 250+ rules if you have 10 machines in a small DHCP range).
Using this NAT strategy no command line options are required (i.e. it is the default NAT strategy).
Command Line Options
The VSee client has command line options available. These don't seem to be documented on the public web site. Some of them are likely to be platform specific (i.e. some will work on OSX but not on Windows).
These have not been verified:
- -jmd
- -debugCS
- -video_to_shm
- -shm_buffers
- -sendringto
- -trackbuddies
- -graphbuddies
- -login
- -echoChat
- -relay relay
- -no_relay
- -new_relay_dev new_relay
- -xmpp_archive
- -force_relay
- -force_private_addr
- -force_udp
- -force_http
- -force_https
- -force_p2p
- -force_hop
- -cross_stream
- -force_server
- -fixed_resource
- -no_watchdog
- -FTPcrash
- -test_version
- -test_update_version
- -no_update
- -debug_file
- -test_upgrade_ver
- -debug_verbose
- -quiet_start
- -port
- -tcpPort
- -no_audio
- -no_video
- -no_camctrl
- -file
- -res
- -auxres
- -fps
- -video_freeze_delay
- -video_buffer_size
- -video_codec
- -upload_video
- -audio_only_recording
- -combinedPacketLength
- -udpsize
- -record
- -timestamp
- -no_layered_windows
- -auto_accept
- -eviCamera
- -flipCamera
- -api_call_control
- -api_login
- -api_bind_all
- -web_login
- -no_firsttimeux
- -url_help
- -cam
- -auxcam
- -no_gui
- -watermark
- -restart_after_crash
- -no_launch_addressbook
- -vars_dialog
- -vars
- -no_autorun
- -no_installmsg
- -install
- -update
- -xmpp_server
- -multi_login
- -no_multi_login
- -mock_download
- -keepsharing
- -webapiBaseUrl
- -no_meeting
- -no_share_warnings
- -uri
- -api_server
- -calltester
- -old_demo
- -restore_last_login
- -PTZ_Zoom
Links
- http://vsee.com/firewall
- https://vsee.com/blog/new-firewall-rules-for-vsee-update/
- http://vsee.com/blog/tag/vsee-firewall-traversal/
- http://superuser.com/questions/16750/how-can-i-run-an-application-with-command-line-arguments-in-mac-os
- STUN
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STUN
- https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5389
- https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3489
- TURN
- ICE (Interactive Connectivity Establishment)
Appendices
OSX with specific port
The following example shows running VSee from a command prompt with UDP port specified as 6001.
open /Applications/VSee.app/ --args -port 6001
