SRT(Secure Reliable Transport) Protocol

In this digital world, there is no day that passes without streaming a video in our lives. There are some important protocols working for us to stream our video without any latency or interruption. One of those protocols is the SRT.In this article, we are gonna see about the SRT streaming protocol.

SRT Protocol

SRT(Secure Reliable Transport) is an open-source video streaming protocol developed by Haivision. As the name suggests, it is used widely for its security, reliability, and low latency. One of the most important features of SRT is that it can transport real-time videos at their best quality even with the worst network. SRT protocol has its source code available on GitHub.

How does SRT work?

When a video is captured, it is encoded and compressed by the SRT HD encoder. Then, it is encrypted with an SRT encryptor and decrypted with an SRT decryptor. When the video is played over the public internet, due to poor signal there may be some packet loss, jitter, and bandwidth fluctuations but the SRT protocol performs packet recovery before the video is played so that there is no interruptions or latency streaming. SRT has a sequence number for individual packets so that if the packet is lost it can be recovered by its sequence number.

What Makes SRT Different from Other Protocols? 

• Other protocols cannot handle video streaming with an extremely erratic network but SRT delivers pristine quality video even with the unreliable network. 
• SRT requires less bandwidth thereby saving computational costs. 
• The latency of video is very less compared to other streaming protocols. 
• SRT has inbuilt functions which can handle packet losses, jitter, and bandwidth fluctuations.                        

Who should use SRT?

•  SRT is used by the SRT Alliance which comprises Microsoft, Alibaba Cloud, Avid, and Telestream. In an environment, where many people access the internet from the same source.
• SRT can be used in IP cameras, video codecs, gateways, OTT platforms, and CDN.

SRT Viable Gadgets and Administrations:

The number of items and administrations that help the SRT convention is expanding to more than huge number of associations across the globe and an extensive variety of industry applications that incorporate IP cameras, video encoders and decoders, entryways, OTT stages, and content conveyance organizations (CDNs).

Here are a portion of the viable gadgets and administrations SRT clients can use:

Encoding apparatuses: Numerous equipment encoders are packaged with SRT support close by different conventions, and it’s an additional benefit while conveying catch, streaming, and keep in 4K/UHD.
Catch cards: SRT-empowered catch cards can give a variety of extra choices for a top quality, high-thickness video like 4K, particularly in a control room climate.
Unravel and show cards: Multi viewer cards can take in SRT-consistent streams from any gadget and any area on the planet. These gadgets are an extraordinary advantage for “non-diversion” use cases, like security and emergency the executives applications.
Encoder/decoders: Proficient grade encoder/decoder matches support many streaming conventions, including SRT, and can communicate live camera streams in 4K or quad HD over organizations, and feeds can be advanced for coordination into studio conditions.

Advantages of SRT

• Recovery of packet lost: With the real-time packet loss recovery system, SRT can recover all the packets lost so the video can be played in the correct sequence.
• Reliable over Unreliable networks: Video can be transmitted smoothly even with unpredictable networks.
• Security: The video transmitter is end-to-end encrypted with 128/256 AES encryption. Secure transport with simplified firewall traversal.
• Compatible: The video streams can be transported to almost all internet-enabled devices.
• Low Latency: The most important advantage is the low latency(120 ms) which makes it the most widely used streaming protocol.