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

Abstract

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

Introduction

The text describes MonitorX, a browser-based system designed for real-time remote teaching and screen monitoring, focusing on low-latency peer-to-peer communication.

It begins by identifying a key limitation in online teaching: instructors lose the ability to casually observe student activity as they would in a physical classroom. Existing tools attempt to solve this but often rely on centralized servers, which introduce latency, cost, and reliability issues.

MonitorX addresses this by using WebRTC-based peer-to-peer connections, allowing screen-sharing streams to go directly from student browsers to the instructor without passing through a media server. A lightweight backend (built with Supabase) handles only authentication, database storage, and signaling.

Technically, the system is a full-stack web application:

• Frontend: React, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, Framer Motion
• Backend: Supabase (Auth, PostgreSQL, Realtime signaling)
• Media transport: Native WebRTC peer-to-peer streaming

Key features include session-based classrooms with unique codes, real-time participant grids, chat (group and private), and raise-hand/help requests. The system is designed to work entirely in the browser without installation.

A major engineering challenge discussed is ensuring reliable WebRTC connection setup, especially handling out-of-order ICE candidates. MonitorX solves this using a queuing mechanism to prevent silent connection failures.

Architecturally, MonitorX uses a hybrid model:

• P2P for media streams (to minimize latency)
• Centralized services for authentication, signaling, and state management

Data flow is described in phases: session creation, participant joining, screen sharing initiation, and WebRTC handshake completion.

Conclusion

MonitorX demonstrates something that is easy to say but harder to actually build: that a well-implemented peer-to-peer architecture can beat a centralized one on nearly every dimension that matters for real-time educational monitoring. Lower latency, lower cost, better privacy, simpler infrastructure — the P2P approach wins on all of them when the implementation is solid. The project\'s main technical contribution is the ICE candidate queuing mechanism, which addresses a real and under-documented reliability problem in WebRTC implementations. The 20% connection failure rate seen in naive implementations dropped to under 1% with the queuing approach. That single fix had the most impact on overall system reliability of anything developed during the project. Beyond the core WebRTC work, the system as a whole performs well. Twenty simultaneous participants at sub-40ms latency with 99.2% connection reliability is a genuinely useful result, not just a number in a table. The usability testing confirmed that the system is approachable for people who are not technically sophisticated, which is important for adoption in actual educational settings. From an infrastructure perspective, the cost story is compelling. Running MonitorX for 1,000 concurrent users at $10-50 per month versus $500+ for equivalent server-based infrastructure removes a real barrier for institutions with limited budgets. The choice of Supabase as the backend was central to this — it removed all server management overhead while providing production-quality authentication, database, and real-time features. There are limits. Twenty participants is a practical cap under the current architecture; beyond that, the host browser\'s burden of managing twenty simultaneous WebRTC connections becomes significant. Expanding beyond that ceiling would require a shift to a Selective Forwarding Unit model, which reintroduces server infrastructure. The current design is the right choice for the target use case but is not the right answer for lecture halls of a hundred students. On the whole, MonitorX is ready to be used. It works reliably, performs well, costs little to run, and addresses a genuine need in remote education. The code is documented, the architecture is extensible, and there is a clear path forward for the features that matter most to real users.

References

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Copyright

Copyright © 2026 Atharv Bhosale, Darshan Patil. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.