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Broadcast Box

Broadcast Box is available in the NetActuate Marketplace as a one-click, open-source appliance you can deploy into any NetActuate PoP. Browser-to-browser WebRTC: publish with WHIP, play with WHEP, sub-second. It is grouped under the Media & Streaming category.

What It Does​

Broadcast Box is a self-hosted, single-binary WebRTC live streaming server. Publish straight from the browser (or any WHIP client such as OBS WebRTC) and play back in the browser over WHEP, with sub-second glass-to-glass latency and no transcoding in the path. It serves its own web frontend and the WHIP (publish) and WHEP (playback) endpoints on a single HTTP port, and carries all WebRTC media over one deterministic UDP port so it is easy to firewall.

Deployed from the NetActuate marketplace it boots hardened and pre-configured from your seeded values: the HTTP port, the WebRTC UDP mux port, the public IP announced as the ICE candidate (auto-detected from the VM if left blank) and a generated admin-portal bearer token are all applied at first boot. Placing it in the PoP nearest your audience keeps the WebRTC path short for the lowest latency.

Publish over WHIP and play over WHEP on port 8080; WebRTC media flows over UDP port 3000. Open both on the instance.

Upstream project: Broadcast Box (https://github.com/Glimesh/broadcast-box), an independent open source project released under the MIT license by Sean DuBois and the Broadcast Box contributors, and published as the official image seaduboi/broadcast-box. Broadcast Box is not affiliated with or endorsed by NetActuate; NetActuate packages the unmodified upstream v2.0.2 release on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.

Vendor and Project​

Broadcast Box is an open-source project, offered here under the Open Source listing with best-effort community support.

NetActuate supports the underlying infrastructure. Application-level support follows the listing SLA class (open-source, best effort).

Sizing​

vCPURAMDisk
Minimum11 GB10 GB
Recommended24 GB20 GB

No VPU (hardware acceleration) is required for this appliance. Choose a size at deploy based on your expected load.

Configuration Fields​

When you deploy, you provide these fields. They are written into the appliance at first boot.

FieldRequiredDefaultNotes
Http PortNo8080
Udp PortNo3000
Public IpNonone
Admin TokenNogeneratedStored write-only in your account secret list

Using the Appliance​

Go live in the browser

  1. Open it. Browse to http://YOUR_VM_IP:8080/ for the Broadcast Box web app.
  2. Publish (WHIP). From the web app, or any WHIP client, publish your camera and mic to http://YOUR_VM_IP:8080/api/whip with your chosen stream key.
  3. Watch (WHEP). Share http://YOUR_VM_IP:8080/<stream-key> (playback uses WHEP at http://YOUR_VM_IP:8080/api/whep).
  4. Open the ports. WebRTC media flows over UDP 3000 and the web/WHIP/WHEP surface over TCP 8080; allow both on the instance.

The public IP announced to WebRTC is auto-detected from the VM (override with the Public IP field). The admin status portal is protected by the generated bearer token in your secret list. Exposure posture: WHIP publishing on plain HTTP is open by default; before production use, put a TLS-terminating proxy in front (Broadcast Box supports SSL natively) or restrict access to trusted sources.

FAQ​

Is there a software license fee? No. Broadcast Box is open source and free to run. You pay only for the NetActuate infrastructure and bandwidth.

Which port does the appliance serve on? The primary service is published on port 8080 by default; see the configuration fields for any adjustable ports.

Who supports it? NetActuate operates the underlying infrastructure. The application itself is community-supported open source (best-effort SLA class).

Version and Changelog​

VersionStatusReleased
2.0.2Current (default)2026-07-11

Deploy​

Need Help?​

Contact support@netactuate.com or open a support ticket from the portal.