MonitorX - Real-Time Screen Monitoring Platform using WebRTC: A Review

Remote classrooms and distributed training arrangements are increasingly commonplace in the world's educational

industry, but the monitoring capabilities available to teachers are far from ideal. Many existing software systems were

repurposed rather than being created from scratch for the purpose of remote classroom monitoring, and it is clear in their

designs. This paper discusses MonitorX, a new platform designed specifically to enable instant screen monitoring by an

instructor of all participants within the classroom in near-zero latency. The platform uses HTML5 video streaming with

WebRTC technology and allows up to twenty participants to send screen streams to the monitor in a grid format in real-time. All

interactions are handled via an included instant messaging facility. Unlike traditional remote monitoring technologies,

MonitorX does not rely on any server; instead, browser-to-browser peer connections provide a low-latency environment without

significant operational expenses. A particularly challenging problem the developers had to solve is one of ICE candidate

management when establishing peer-to-peer communication in the WebRTC technology - an apparently small but critical aspect

causing high failure rates in naive implementations of WebRTC-based communication. The design and performance of

MonitorX in general and its solution to the problem in particular are discussed below. The results indicate that the connectivity

success rate was 99.2%, latency of about 35 ms, and stable performance of the system with twenty users at 55 to 60 fps, at a much

lower cost than that of server-based systems