On CPUs without AES acceleration (very old x86 CPUs, certain ARM SoCs on single board computers, certain VMs that don't expose AES acceleration capability), the default encryption method (AES-256-GCM) might not be fast enough to handle high frame-rate + high bitrate streams.
In such cases, you can enable the forceChacha20Encryption option on the Streamer instance (streamer.opts.forceChacha20Encryption = true) before starting a stream, to force the use of the faster Chacha20-Poly1305 encryption method. For even higher performance, also install the optional sodium-native package to use the faster native version instead of the WASM version.
Below are some benchmark results of the two encryption methods in various circumstances, for reference purposes only. All benchmarks are performed on a Ryzen 5 5600H.
AES-256-GCM, with AES acceleration
PS C:\> openssl speed -elapsed -aead -evp aes-256-gcm
You have chosen to measure elapsed time instead of user CPU time.
Doing AES-256-GCM ops for 3s on 2 size blocks: 19046296 AES-256-GCM ops in 3.00s
Doing AES-256-GCM ops for 3s on 31 size blocks: 15299030 AES-256-GCM ops in 3.00s
Doing AES-256-GCM ops for 3s on 136 size blocks: 13580376 AES-256-GCM ops in 3.00s
Doing AES-256-GCM ops for 3s on 1024 size blocks: 7691855 AES-256-GCM ops in 3.00s
Doing AES-256-GCM ops for 3s on 8192 size blocks: 1648811 AES-256-GCM ops in 3.00s
Doing AES-256-GCM ops for 3s on 16384 size blocks: 863115 AES-256-GCM ops in 3.00s
version: 3.4.0
built on: Tue Oct 22 23:27:41 2024 UTC
options: bn(64,64)
compiler: cl /Z7 /Fdossl_static.pdb /Gs0 /GF /Gy /MD /W3 /wd4090 /nologo /O2 -DL_ENDIAN -DOPENSSL_PIC -D"OPENSSL_BUILDING_OPENSSL" -D"OPENSSL_SYS_WIN32" -D"WIN32_LEAN_AND_MEAN" -D"UNICODE" -D"_UNICODE" -D"_CRT_SECURE_NO_DEPRECATE" -D"_WINSOCK_DEPRECATED_NO_WARNINGS" -D"NDEBUG" -D_WINSOCK_DEPRECATED_NO_WARNINGS -D_WIN32_WINNT=0x0502
CPUINFO: OPENSSL_ia32cap=0xfed8320b078bffff:0x400684219c97a9
The 'numbers' are in 1000s of bytes per second processed.
type 2 bytes 31 bytes 136 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes 16384 bytes
AES-256-GCM 12693.30k 158089.98k 615233.56k 2625486.51k 4500852.95k 4712187.99k
AES-256-GCM, without AES acceleration
PS C:\> openssl speed -elapsed -aead -evp aes-256-gcm
You have chosen to measure elapsed time instead of user CPU time.
Doing AES-256-GCM ops for 3s on 2 size blocks: 6947831 AES-256-GCM ops in 3.00s
Doing AES-256-GCM ops for 3s on 31 size blocks: 4875037 AES-256-GCM ops in 3.00s
Doing AES-256-GCM ops for 3s on 136 size blocks: 3132696 AES-256-GCM ops in 3.00s
Doing AES-256-GCM ops for 3s on 1024 size blocks: 821006 AES-256-GCM ops in 3.00s
Doing AES-256-GCM ops for 3s on 8192 size blocks: 113769 AES-256-GCM ops in 3.00s
Doing AES-256-GCM ops for 3s on 16384 size blocks: 57074 AES-256-GCM ops in 3.00s
version: 3.4.0
built on: Tue Oct 22 23:27:41 2024 UTC
options: bn(64,64)
compiler: cl /Z7 /Fdossl_static.pdb /Gs0 /GF /Gy /MD /W3 /wd4090 /nologo /O2 -DL_ENDIAN -DOPENSSL_PIC -D"OPENSSL_BUILDING_OPENSSL" -D"OPENSSL_SYS_WIN32" -D"WIN32_LEAN_AND_MEAN" -D"UNICODE" -D"_UNICODE" -D"_CRT_SECURE_NO_DEPRECATE" -D"_WINSOCK_DEPRECATED_NO_WARNINGS" -D"NDEBUG" -D_WINSOCK_DEPRECATED_NO_WARNINGS -D_WIN32_WINNT=0x0502
CPUINFO: OPENSSL_ia32cap=0xfcd83209078bffff:0x0 env:~0x200000200000000
The 'numbers' are in 1000s of bytes per second processed.
type 2 bytes 31 bytes 136 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes 16384 bytes
AES-256-GCM 4630.34k 50358.60k 142015.55k 280143.33k 310561.70k 311596.27k
Chacha20-Poly1305
PS C:\> openssl speed -elapsed -aead -evp chacha20-poly1305
You have chosen to measure elapsed time instead of user CPU time.
Doing ChaCha20-Poly1305 ops for 3s on 2 size blocks: 8312139 ChaCha20-Poly1305 ops in 3.00s
Doing ChaCha20-Poly1305 ops for 3s on 31 size blocks: 7801222 ChaCha20-Poly1305 ops in 3.00s
Doing ChaCha20-Poly1305 ops for 3s on 136 size blocks: 5436377 ChaCha20-Poly1305 ops in 3.00s
Doing ChaCha20-Poly1305 ops for 3s on 1024 size blocks: 4182141 ChaCha20-Poly1305 ops in 3.00s
Doing ChaCha20-Poly1305 ops for 3s on 8192 size blocks: 903567 ChaCha20-Poly1305 ops in 3.00s
Doing ChaCha20-Poly1305 ops for 3s on 16384 size blocks: 472556 ChaCha20-Poly1305 ops in 3.00s
version: 3.4.0
built on: Tue Oct 22 23:27:41 2024 UTC
options: bn(64,64)
compiler: cl /Z7 /Fdossl_static.pdb /Gs0 /GF /Gy /MD /W3 /wd4090 /nologo /O2 -DL_ENDIAN -DOPENSSL_PIC -D"OPENSSL_BUILDING_OPENSSL" -D"OPENSSL_SYS_WIN32" -D"WIN32_LEAN_AND_MEAN" -D"UNICODE" -D"_UNICODE" -D"_CRT_SECURE_NO_DEPRECATE" -D"_WINSOCK_DEPRECATED_NO_WARNINGS" -D"NDEBUG" -D_WINSOCK_DEPRECATED_NO_WARNINGS -D_WIN32_WINNT=0x0502
CPUINFO: OPENSSL_ia32cap=0xfed8320b078bffff:0x400684219c97a9
The 'numbers' are in 1000s of bytes per second processed.
type 2 bytes 31 bytes 136 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes 16384 bytes
ChaCha20-Poly1305 5539.58k 80585.77k 246284.90k 1427504.13k 2465696.49k 2580785.83k