Reliable Internet Stream Transport

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Reliable Internet Stream Transport (RIST) is an open-source, open-specification transport protocol designed for reliable transmission of video over lossy networks (including the Internet) with low latency and high quality. It is currently under development in the Video Services Forum's "RIST Activity Group." [1]

Contents

RIST is intended as a more reliable successor to Secure Reliable Transport, and as an open alternative to proprietary commercial options such as ActionStreamer, Zixi, VideoFlow, QVidium, and DVEO (Dozer).

Technology

Technically, RIST seeks to provide reliable, high performance media transport by using RTP / UDP at the transport layer to avoid the limitations of TCP. Reliability is achieved by using NACK-based retransmissions (ARQ). SMPTE-2022 Forward Error Correction can be combined with RIST but is known to be significantly less effective than ARQ. [2]

RIST Simple Profile [3] was published in October 2018 and includes the following features:

The RIST AG is working on an update to RIST Simple Profile that adds link probing to allow for dynamic ARQ protection.

RIST Main Profile [4] was published in March 2020 and adds the following features to Simple Profile:

The RIST AG has defined a number of Main Profile compliance levels. Approval of this document is expected soon.

RIST Advanced Profile was published in 2022 and updated in 2023.

VideoFlow has provided IPR that covers both Simple Profile and Main Profile under RAND-Z terms.

Open source implementations and tools

Related Research Articles

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References

  1. "RIST Activity Group". Video Services Forum. Retrieved 29 March 2019.
  2. Noronha, Ciro. "A Study of Protocols for Low-Latency Video Transport over the Internet" (PDF). Retrieved April 20, 2020.
  3. "Video Services Forum Technical Recommendation TR-06-1" (PDF). Video Services Forum . Retrieved 4 April 2019.
  4. "Video Services Forum Technical Recommendation TR-06-2" (PDF). Video Services Forum . Retrieved April 20, 2020.