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PulseBeam is an open source, general-purpose WebRTC SFU server for connecting browsers, mobile, and IoT clients. We believe real-time application development shouldn't be complicated, nor should it rely on heavy architectures with many moving parts. PulseBeam reduces this friction by adhering to these core design goals:

• Support all WebRTC clients.
• Keep the architecture simple, but not simpler.
• Natively support vertical and horizontal scaling.
• Provide client SDKs strictly for convenience, not necessity.
• Require minimal configuration.

If your client device speaks WebRTC, it can communicate with PulseBeam.

PulseBeam is opinionated about media handling to prioritize battery efficiency, hardware support, and predictable performance:

• Video: H.264 Baseline profile up to Level 4.1
• Audio: Opus
• Data Channel: Planned

The architecture is highly inspired bySDN architecture.

The following quickstart assumes that you have a Linux machine. As a fallback, you can go tohttps://pulsebeam.dev/#quickstart and check the "fallback" toggle.

Docker/Podman (recommended):

docker run --rm --net=host ghcr.io/pulsebeamdev/pulsebeam:pulsebeam-v0.2.23

Open Port Requirements:

• TCP/3000: HTTP signaling
• UDP/3478: WebRTC traffic (Multiplexed)
• TCP/3478: WebRTC over TCP fallback (Multiplexed) —Planned

Other options:

• Binary: download fromReleases
• Source:cargo run --release -p pulsebeam

Run the following snippet in the browser console:

constpc=newRTCPeerConnection();conststream=awaitnavigator.mediaDevices.getUserMedia({video:true});consttransceiver=pc.addTransceiver("video",{direction:"sendonly",// Define scalability layers (low, medium, high)sendEncodings:[{rid:"q",scaleResolutionDownBy:4,maxBitrate:150_000},{rid:"h",scaleResolutionDownBy:2,maxBitrate:400_000},{rid:"f",scaleResolutionDownBy:1,maxBitrate:1_250_000},],});transceiver.sender.replaceTrack(stream.getVideoTracks()[0]);constoffer=awaitpc.createOffer();awaitpc.setLocalDescription(offer);constres=awaitfetch("http://localhost:3000/api/v1/rooms/demo",{method:"POST",headers:{"Content-Type":"application/sdp"},body:offer.sdp});awaitpc.setRemoteDescription({type:"answer",sdp:awaitres.text()});

Go tohttps://codepen.io/lherman-cs/pen/pvgVZar, then put "demo" as the room to connect to.

PulseBeam exposes an internal debug HTTP server onhttp://localhost:6060.

• Metrics (Prometheus):http://localhost:6060/metrics
• CPU profile (pprof):http://localhost:6060/debug/pprof/profile?seconds=30
• CPU flamegraph:http://localhost:6060/debug/pprof/profile?seconds=30&flamegraph=true
• Memory profile:http://localhost:6060/debug/pprof/allocs

CPU profiling measuresCPU usage, not wall time. For meaningful results, profile while the server is under load.

View CPU profiles with:

go tool pprof -http=:8080 cpu.pprof

Or view as a flamegraph on a browser by specifyingflamegraph=true to the URL query.

• ✅ Prototype: Rust SFU + demo apps
• ✅ Bandwidth estimator, simulcast support
• 🚧 Top-N audio selection, Data channel, Web Client SDK
• 📅 HTTP API & Webhooks (events)
• 📅 Multi-node / cascading SFU support
• 📅 Extensions: recording, SIP, AI agents