Video Room Cleanup: Avoiding Ghost Sessions Through Authoritative Presence Checks

The article argues that a video room should be removed from the active index only after authoritative occupancy reaches zero, remains empty for a measured grace period, and still matches the generation that scheduled the cleanup. It notes that a last-participant leave callback is merely a hint, since disconnects, reconnects, duplicated or reordered callbacks, and multiple servers can all produce misleading signals. For shared B2B workspaces, the author prioritizes presence accuracy over cleanup speed, recommending a generation-checked grace timer backed by a slow reconciliation sweep. The piece also points out that WebRTC's connection states describe individual peer connections, not the lifecycle of an application-level room. It recommends choosing the grace interval from measured reconnect behavior rather than a universal value, since the WebRTC specification provides none.