The encyclopedia · Software & IT · Strategic decision · 2013–2017
Haivision open-sourced SRT and it became live streaming's transport
SRT, Haivision's reliable low-latency video transport, went open source with Wowza in 2017; broadcasters adopted it for live streams over ordinary internet.
Haivision · Wowza Media Systems
The solution
Live video over the public internet is lossy: jitter and packet loss break streams or force multi-second delays, so broadcasters relied on expensive satellite and private networks for contribution.
Haivision developed SRT (Secure Reliable Transport) to deliver low-latency video over unreliable networks, and in April 2017 it open-sourced the protocol on GitHub and co-founded the SRT Alliance with Wowza. SRT recovers from one to two percent packet loss while keeping latency near 500 milliseconds, with AES encryption and easy firewall traversal.
Because the protocol was free and full-stack — encoders, servers, decoders, players — vendors adopted it quickly. The alliance promoted SRT as a common standard for low-latency internet streaming, and it became the de facto transport for remote production and live contribution, used by VLC, FFmpeg, OBS, Microsoft, Avid, Alibaba and Tencent.
Why it worked
- Open source meant zero royalties and no long-term contracts.
- 500ms-class latency beat legacy multi-second delivery chains.
- Packet-loss recovery made public internet usable for live production.
- The alliance gave vendors one standard instead of private protocols.
What can be applied
A proprietary advantage can become a standard if you give away the layer everyone shares: by open-sourcing the transport, Haivision made SRT the low-latency glue and let the ecosystem adopt it.
Aftermath
SRT is embedded in thousands of organizations' products — IP cameras, encoders, gateways, OTT platforms and CDNs — and adopted by open-source players like VLC, GStreamer and OBS, with the SRT Alliance continuing to push it as the common standard for low-latency streaming.
Sources
- Haivision and Wowza Form SRT Alliance to Support New Open Source Low Latency Video Streaming Initiative
- Haivision and Wowza Launch SRT Alliance for Low-Latency Streaming
- The Ultimate SRT FAQ
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