Haivision and Wowza Form SRT Alliance Open Source Low Latency Video Streaming Initiative

SRT video transport protocol now available to developers to deliver high-quality and secure low-latency video across the public internet

NAB SHOW, Las Vegas – April 24, 2017 – Wowza™ Media Systems, the recognized gold standard in streaming video, and Haivision, a pioneer in high performance video streaming, today announced the founding of the SRT Alliance and the open source availability of SRT™, a video transport protocol to enable the delivery of high-quality and secure, low-latency video across the public Internet.

Despite advances in internet streaming, live video transport has faced a variety of latency challenges. This includes complications from origin network conditions, CDN caching and video transcoding, and last mile network congestion, among other issues.

To solve these challenges, Haivision and Wowza are making SRT available as an open source full-stack protocol that provides a secure and reliable solution for low latency video transport with packet loss recovery, end-to-end security with AES encryption, network health monitoring between endpoints, and simplified firewall traversal. Developers can use SRT to send video over any network, including the public internet.

Applied on encoders, streaming servers, decoders, set-top boxes and embedded media players, SRT presents a fundamental technology for high performance end-to-end video streaming. SRT can be used by broadcast solution providers, video streaming technology vendors, enterprise video platform developers, live event production companies, OEM hardware developers, and any developer needing low latency video streaming for hardware or software.

SRT is available on GitHub as source code with build tools, along with sample applications, so developers can immediately incorporate the protocol within their technologies. Developers can also improve upon, use, and re-contribute (under LGPLv2 license) to SRT.

“The most difficult challenge for interactive streamers is being able to deliver at scale while maintaining high interactivity,” says Charlie Good, chief technology officer and cofounder at Wowza. “To accomplish this feat, you need a protocol that can deliver across the technology stack, seamlessly and without fail, but does so with the lowest end-to-end latency possible. SRT is the first solution that’s offered freely by the leaders in the streaming industry, that has the potential to transform streaming applications for years to come.”

“We’ve released the SRT source code for any developer who wants to deliver low-latency video streaming solutions for their users,” said Peter Maag, chief marketing officer, Haivision. “By opening up this technology to the world, SRT is the low-latency glue that bonds the video streaming ecosystem closer together – improving the way we all stream and continuing to significantly reduce internet streaming latency for the best viewing experiences.”

SRT Alliance

The SRT Alliance was founded by Haivision and Wowza. The mission of the SRT Alliance is to overcome the challenges of low latency video streaming, thereby changing the way the world streams. Fundamental to this mission is the support of a freely available open source video transport protocol that will accelerate innovation through collaborative development. The SRT Alliance will promote the industry-wide recognition and adoption of SRT as a common standard for all low latency internet streaming. Wowza and Haivision will demonstrate the open source SRT protocol at the 2017 NAB Show at the Renaissance Hotel, 2nd floor. For more information on how to join the SRT Alliance, visit srtalliance.org.