Introducing the SRT protocol for secure and reliable live media transport
Anders Cedronius, product innovation and development at Edgeware
When moving services to a data center environment, we need mechanisms that can transport our clients’ data to our services in the data center in a secure and reliable way. For non-live content, there have been such protocols available since the birth of the internet, many of which we use every day for bank transfers and other private transactions through the likes of the HTTP(S) protocol.
When it comes to live media transport, there are also many solutions available. However, there are few that meet all the requirements of professional grade solutions for media transport over the public internet.
One of the protocols that does meet the requirements is the Secure Reliable Transport (SRT) open source protocol created by Haivision, which is why we have integrated it into our current products – including those within StreamBuilder.
SRT integration
Our work with SRT started last year, through a joint project with Eyevinn Technology where we tested SRT together with our managed service, Edgeware Cloud Service. With a focus on assessing ease of use, reliability and latency, this test proved that SRT offers a viable option for stream delivery to commercial cloud services without requiring significant investment.
Since this test, we’ve spent a lot of time monitoring SRT and looking at how we can transport live streams from encoders running in our customers’ data centers up to StreamBuilder running in a public cloud – all in a secure and reliable way. This led to us implementing the SRT protocol, enabling our products to communicate with different parts of the media distribution workflow over public internet.
This removes the need for businesses to have a very fast and often expensive internet connection from their source to their ingest. SRT enables companies like us to transport media from customer locations with a regular internet connection, to a data center in another location. This is a significant cost-saver, making it much easier for customers to connect to anywhere in the world.
SRT allows users to ingest content over continents. We’ve run tests from Stockholm to Australia and SRT has proven to lower costs while extending the reach of content distribution networks. It has also enabled us to leap ahead when designing media applications and workflows, as we can build on top of the open source project rather than having to create the full stack from the first line of code.
“We’re delighted to have Edgeware on board as a user of the SRT protocol. SRT is a big enabler for broadcast over the public internet,” said Jesús (Suso) Carrillo, Director SRT Alliance at Haivision. “For live TV distribution, SRT is able to bridge solutions all the way from production to delivery. Integrating the protocol with solutions such as StreamBuilder can help overcome many of the inherent complexities and costs associated with building online TV streams, resulting in a unique offering that can make a real difference for businesses.”
Full steam ahead
This integration is just the first step in our work with SRT. We’re also part of the SRT Hub partner ecosystem, a marketplace and network infrastructure where those who have implemented SRT can provide and receive services from that network. The hub acts as an enabler for communication over public infrastructure, making it simpler for users to build efficient workflows from production to distribution.
And this is exactly what we plan to do. We’re constantly challenging ourselves, making our solutions more effective and enabling new ways of working with media. This has already been shown by the release of our multi-CDN control platform StreamPilot, along with our Virtual Channel Creation solution in StreamBuilder for regionalized online channels.
With SRT integration enabling our products to meet the growing demand for reliable and effective content transport, we’re hugely excited about what the future holds. We hope you are too.
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