Run Jitsi on Custom Ports

Jitsi is a video conferencing system that you can install on a private host. Traffic is encrypted from client to server but is decrypted at the server in order to relay the audio/video to conference participants. I chose to run my own server so that decrypted communication is kept on a server I control running in my garage.

Like most people, I get 1 public IP from my ISP. Since I already run stuff on TCP/443 I needed Jitsi to run on some other port. Since I could not find a step-by-step guide on how to so this, I worked it out and am posting this here for anyone who wants Jitsi to run on a custom port.

The basic overview on how I got this to work ran like this:
1) Switch router 80/443 ports to point to the host that will host Jitsi.
2) Run through the Jitsi Quick Install
3) Switch router 80/443 back to original host. Add port forward for 444 to Jitsi host.
4) Edit the configs for new port, restart and test.

Here are the details:

Step 1:
I found that when Jitsi installs it is expecting to have the default ports 80 and 443 available. The easiest way to handle this is to just temporarily give the Jitsi host the 80/443 that it needs. I changed my perimeter router to forward TCP/80 and TCP/443 away from the original host to the new Jitsi host. This is just for the quick install and is switched back after the install is completed. Add the additional ports Jitsi needs TCP/4443 and UDP/10000.

So, for Step 1, you should have the following ports forwarded into Jitsi:

disabled TCP/80 --> original host tcp/80
disabled TCP/443 --> original host tcp/443
TCP 80 --> Jitsi host tcp/80
TCP 443 --> Jitsi host tcp/443
TCP 4443 --> Jitsi host tcp/4443
UDP 10000 --> Jitsi host udp/10000

Step 2:
The basic Jitsi setup is located here Jitsi Quick Setup. This setup gets you the default jitsi install using nginx and videobridge2. You should be able to connect to your Jitsi service on https port 443 at this point. If you can, then the default Jitsi is done.

Step 3:
Switch your router TCP/80 and TCP/443 back to the original host. Create new port forward entries for TCP/444 to the Jitsi host.
So, for Step 3, you should have the following ports forwarded into Jitsi:

TCP/80 --> original host tcp/80
TCP/443 --> original host tcp/443
disabled TCP 80 --> Jitsi host tcp/80
disabled TCP 443 --> Jitsi host tcp/443
TCP 444 --> Jitsi host tcp/444
TCP 4443 --> Jitsi host tcp/4443
UDP 10000 --> Jitsi host udp/10000

Step 4:
To get the Jitsi frontend to answer on TCP/444 we need to edit the following:

Edit /etc/nginx/sites-available/yoursite.conf
Update the port 443 to 444

server {
    listen 444 ssl;
    listen [::]:444 ssl;

Edit /etc/jitsi/meet/yousite-config.js
Update the ‘bosh:’ value to include port 444

    // BOSH URL. FIXME: use XEP-0156 to discover it.
    bosh: '//yoursite:444/http-bind',

Restart nginx service
Restart jitsi-videobridge2 service.

And that’s it. Test it by hitting https://yoursite:444 and you should get the jitsi home page and be able to start a conference