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Generate Credentials

Cloudflare will issue TURN keys, but these keys cannot be used as credentials with turn.cloudflare.com. To use TURN, you need to create credentials with a expiring TTL value.

Create a TURN key

To create a TURN credential, you first need to create a TURN key using Dashboard ↗, or the API.

You should keep your TURN key on the server side (don't share it with the browser/app). A TURN key is a long-term secret that allows you to generate unlimited, shorter lived TURN credentials for TURN clients.

With a TURN key you can:

  • Generate TURN credentials that expire
  • Revoke previously issued TURN credentials

Create credentials

You should generate short-lived credentials for each TURN user. In order to create credentials, you should have a back-end service that uses your TURN Token ID and API token to generate credentials. It will make an API call like this:

Terminal window
curl https://rtc.live.cloudflare.com/v1/turn/keys/$TURN_KEY_ID/credentials/generate-ice-servers \
--header "Authorization: Bearer $TURN_KEY_API_TOKEN" \
--header "Content-Type: application/json" \
--data '{"ttl": 86400}'

The JSON response below can then be passed on to your front-end application:

{
  "iceServers": [
    {
      "urls": [
        "stun:stun.cloudflare.com:3478",
        "stun:stun.cloudflare.com:53",
        "turn:turn.cloudflare.com:3478?transport=udp",
        "turn:turn.cloudflare.com:53?transport=udp",
        "turn:turn.cloudflare.com:3478?transport=tcp",
        "turn:turn.cloudflare.com:80?transport=tcp",
        "turns:turn.cloudflare.com:5349?transport=tcp",
        "turns:turn.cloudflare.com:443?transport=tcp"
      ],
      "username": "bc91b63e2b5d759f8eb9f3b58062439e0a0e15893d76317d833265ad08d6631099ce7c7087caabb31ad3e1c386424e3e",
      "credential": "ebd71f1d3edbc2b0edae3cd5a6d82284aeb5c3b8fdaa9b8e3bf9cec683e0d45fe9f5b44e5145db3300f06c250a15b4a0"
    }
  ]
}

Use iceServers as follows when instantiating the RTCPeerConnection:

const myPeerConnection = new RTCPeerConnection({
  iceServers: [
    {
      urls: [
        "stun:stun.cloudflare.com:3478",
        "stun:stun.cloudflare.com:53",
        "turn:turn.cloudflare.com:3478?transport=udp",
        "turn:turn.cloudflare.com:53?transport=udp",
        "turn:turn.cloudflare.com:3478?transport=tcp",
        "turn:turn.cloudflare.com:80?transport=tcp",
        "turns:turn.cloudflare.com:5349?transport=tcp",
        "turns:turn.cloudflare.com:443?transport=tcp"
      ],
      "username": "bc91b63e2b5d759f8eb9f3b58062439e0a0e15893d76317d833265ad08d6631099ce7c7087caabb31ad3e1c386424e3e",
      "credential": "ebd71f1d3edbc2b0edae3cd5a6d82284aeb5c3b8fdaa9b8e3bf9cec683e0d45fe9f5b44e5145db3300f06c250a15b4a0"
    },
  ],
});

The ttl value can be adjusted to expire the short lived key in a certain amount of time. This value should be larger than the time you'd expect the users to use the TURN service. For example, if you're using TURN for a video conferencing app, the value should be set to the longest video call you'd expect to happen in the app.

When using short-lived TURN credentials with WebRTC, credentials can be refreshed during a WebRTC session using the RTCPeerConnection setConfiguration() ↗ API.

Revoke credentials

Short lived credentials can also be revoked before their TTL expires with a API call like this:

Terminal window
curl --request POST \
https://rtc.live.cloudflare.com/v1/turn/keys/$TURN_KEY_ID/credentials/$USERNAME/revoke \
--header "Authorization: Bearer $TURN_KEY_API_TOKEN"