Monitoring

Live777 exposes Prometheus metrics out of the box — the endpoint is always compiled in, no cargo feature or config flag is needed. A ready-made Prometheus + Grafana stack ships in the repository for local use and as a starting point for production deployments.

Metrics endpoint

Every live777 node serves its metrics on the HTTP port (default 7777):

curl http://localhost:7777/metrics

Metric	Type	Description
live777_stream	gauge	Number of streams
live777_publish	gauge	Number of publish sessions
live777_subscribe	gauge	Number of subscribe sessions
live777_reforward	gauge	Number of reforward (cascade) sessions
live777_rtp_bytes_total{direction="in|out"}	counter	RTP media bytes transferred (wire size); in = received from publishers, out = sent to subscribers
live777_rtcp_packets_total{direction="to_publisher|from_subscriber", kind="pli|fir|nack|rr|sr|twcc|remb|other"}	counter	RTCP packets by direction and type; to_publisher = written to a publish peer (including PLI/FIR keyframe requests relayed from subscribers), from_subscriber = received from a subscribe peer (requires live777 built with the source feature)
live777_stream_rtp_bytes_total{stream, direction="in|out"}	counter	Per-stream RTP media bytes — the same accounting as the server-wide counter, with the stream name as a label
live777_stream_sessions{stream, kind="publish|subscribe"}	gauge	Per-stream session counts, refreshed from live state on the server's 2 s stats tick
live777_datachannel_messages_total{direction="in|out"}	counter	DataChannel messages; in = received from a client, out = written to a client (one per attached peer, so out reflects the broadcast fan-out)
live777_datachannel_bytes_total{direction="in|out"}	counter	DataChannel payload bytes (message body, no SCTP/DTLS framing) — the same accounting points as the messages counter
live777_datachannel_dropped_total{direction="out"}	counter	DataChannel messages dropped because a slow channel lagged behind its stream's broadcast bus
live777_stream_datachannel_bytes_total{stream, direction="in|out"}	counter	Per-stream DataChannel payload bytes — the same accounting as the server-wide counter, with the stream name as a label (same cardinality caveats as stream_rtp_bytes_total)

WARNING

The stream label is unbounded in deployments where streams are created dynamically (WHIP/WHEP auto-create is on by default): every live stream adds new series. A stream's series are removed from the exporter when the stream is deleted, so the registry stays bounded to live streams — but a high-churn deployment still shows many short-lived series in Prometheus. Provisioned-stream deployments (config-declared streams) have a bounded label set and are the safe target for the per-stream metrics.

Per-stream and per-session bitrates and cumulative totals are also available as the stats field of the stream/session REST API (and pushed live to the WebUI dashboard over SSE), which is usually more convenient than metrics for interactive inspection.

INFO

liveman has no Prometheus endpoint. To monitor a cluster, scrape every live777 node directly.

Prometheus + Grafana stack

The repository ships a self-contained stack:

• compose.monitoring.yml — Prometheus + Grafana services
• conf/monitoring/prometheus.yml — scrape configuration
• conf/monitoring/grafana/ — provisioned datasource and a live777 overview dashboard

Start it next to a running live777:

# live777 itself runs however you like — cargo run, systemd, or Docker
cargo run --release --features=webui

docker compose -f compose.monitoring.yml up -d

Then open:

• Grafana: http://localhost:3000 (default login admin / admin — change it for anything beyond a local deployment)
• Prometheus: http://localhost:9090

The default scrape target is host.docker.internal:7777, i.e. a live777 running on the Docker host (on Linux the compose file maps host.docker.internal to the host gateway). To monitor several nodes — for example a local livenil cluster — add them to conf/monitoring/prometheus.yml:

scrape_configs:
    - job_name: live777-cluster
      static_configs:
          - targets:
                - host.docker.internal:7777
                - host.docker.internal:7778
                - host.docker.internal:7779

The Grafana dashboard shows stream/publisher/subscriber/reforward counts, sessions over time, RTP bitrate, per-stream bitrate and session counts, RTCP packet rates, and DataChannel message/payload-bitrate rates (including bus-lag drops), refreshing every 5 seconds. When Prometheus scrapes several live777 nodes or a node serves several streams, the Instance and Stream dropdowns at the top filter the panels.

Combining with load tests

Metrics become meaningful under load. Drive the node with LiveWrk while watching the dashboard:

just livewrk-whip 100 60          # 100 concurrent WHIP publishers
just livewrk-whep 100 60 load-0   # 100 concurrent WHEP subscribers

For reproducible benchmarks, fix the parameters (sessions, duration, codec, resolution), record the live777_rtp_bytes_total rate plus process CPU and memory, and compare across builds.