Internet DRAFT - draft-sharabayko-srt
draft-sharabayko-srt
Network Working Group M.P. Sharabayko
Internet-Draft M.A. Sharabayko
Intended status: Informational Haivision Network Video, GmbH
Expires: 11 March 2022 J. Dube
Haivision Systems, Inc.
JS. Kim
JW. Kim
SK Telecom Co., Ltd.
7 September 2021
The SRT Protocol
draft-sharabayko-srt-01
Abstract
This document specifies Secure Reliable Transport (SRT) protocol.
SRT is a user-level protocol over User Datagram Protocol and provides
reliability and security optimized for low latency live video
streaming, as well as generic bulk data transfer. For this, SRT
introduces control packet extension, improved flow control, enhanced
congestion control and a mechanism for data encryption.
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
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Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
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material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on 11 March 2022.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2021 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/
license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document.
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Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights
and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components
extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.1. Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.2. Secure Reliable Transport Protocol . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2. Terms and Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3. Packet Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.1. Data Packets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.2. Control Packets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.2.1. Handshake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.2.2. Key Material . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
3.2.3. Keep-Alive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
3.2.4. ACK (Acknowledgment) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
3.2.5. NAK (Negative Acknowledgement or Loss Report) . . . . 25
3.2.6. Congestion Warning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
3.2.7. Shutdown . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
3.2.8. ACKACK (Acknowledgement of Acknowledgement) . . . . . 27
3.2.9. Message Drop Request . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
3.2.10. Peer Error . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
4. SRT Data Transmission and Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
4.1. Stream Multiplexing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
4.2. Data Transmission Modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
4.2.1. Message Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
4.2.2. Buffer Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
4.3. Handshake Messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
4.3.1. Caller-Listener Handshake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
4.3.2. Rendezvous Handshake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
4.4. SRT Buffer Latency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
4.5. Timestamp-Based Packet Delivery . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
4.5.1. Packet Delivery Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
4.6. Too-Late Packet Drop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
4.7. Drift Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
4.8. Acknowledgement and Lost Packet Handling . . . . . . . . 51
4.8.1. Packet Acknowledgement (ACKs, ACKACKs) . . . . . . . 51
4.8.2. Packet Retransmission (NAKs) . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
4.9. Bidirectional Transmission Queues . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
4.10. Round-Trip Time Estimation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
5. SRT Packet Pacing and Congestion Control . . . . . . . . . . 55
5.1. SRT Packet Pacing and Live Congestion Control (LiveCC) . 55
5.1.1. Configuring Maximum Bandwidth . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
5.1.2. SRT's Default LiveCC Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . 58
5.2. File Transfer Congestion Control (FileCC) . . . . . . . . 59
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5.2.1. SRT's Default FileCC Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . 59
6. Encryption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
6.1. Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
6.1.1. Encryption Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
6.1.2. AES Counter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
6.1.3. Stream Encrypting Key (SEK) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
6.1.4. Key Encrypting Key (KEK) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
6.1.5. Key Material Exchange . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
6.1.6. KM Refresh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
6.2. Encryption Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
6.2.1. Generating the Stream Encrypting Key . . . . . . . . 70
6.2.2. Encrypting the Payload . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
6.3. Decryption Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
6.3.1. Restoring the Stream Encrypting Key . . . . . . . . . 71
6.3.2. Decrypting the Payload . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
7. Best Practices and Configuration Tips for Data Transmission via
SRT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
7.1. Live Streaming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
7.2. File Transmission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
7.2.1. File Transmission in Buffer Mode . . . . . . . . . . 73
7.2.2. File Transmission in Message Mode . . . . . . . . . . 74
8. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
9. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
Appendix A. Packet Sequence List Coding . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
Appendix B. SRT Access Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
B.1. General Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
B.2. Standard Keys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
B.3. Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Appendix C. Changelog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
C.1. Since draft-sharabayko-mops-srt-00 . . . . . . . . . . . 82
C.2. Since draft-sharabayko-mops-srt-01 . . . . . . . . . . . 82
C.3. Since draft-sharabayko-srt-00 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
1. Introduction
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1.1. Motivation
The demand for live video streaming has been increasing steadily for
many years. With the emergence of cloud technologies, many video
processing pipeline components have transitioned from on-premises
appliances to software running on cloud instances. While real-time
streaming over TCP-based protocols like RTMP [RTMP] is possible at
low bitrates and on a small scale, the exponential growth of the
streaming market has created a need for more powerful solutions.
To improve scalability on the delivery side, content delivery
networks (CDNs) at one point transitioned to segmentation-based
technologies like HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) [RFC8216] and DASH
(Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP) [ISO23009]. This move
increased the end-to-end latency of live streaming to over few tens
of seconds, which makes it unattractive for specific use cases where
real-time is important. Over time, the industry optimized these
delivery methods, bringing the latency down to few seconds.
While the delivery side scaled up, improvements to video transcoding
became a necessity. Viewers watch video streams on a variety of
different devices, connected over different types of networks. Since
upload bandwidth from on-premises locations is often limited, video
transcoding moved to the cloud.
RTMP became the de facto standard for contribution over the public
Internet. But there are limitations for the payload to be
transmitted, since RTMP as a media specific protocol only supports
two audio channels and a restricted set of audio and video codecs,
lacking support for newer formats such as HEVC [H.265], VP9 [VP9], or
AV1 [AV1].
Since RTMP, HLS and DASH rely on TCP, these protocols can only
guarantee acceptable reliability over connections with low RTTs, and
can not use the bandwidth of network connections to their full extent
due to limitations imposed by congestion control. Notably, QUIC
[RFC9000] has been designed to address these problems with HTTP-based
delivery protocols in HTTP/3 [I-D.ietf-quic-http]. Like QUIC, SRT
[SRTSRC] uses UDP instead of the TCP transport protocol, but assures
more reliable delivery using Automatic Repeat Request (ARQ), packet
acknowledgments, end-to-end latency management, etc.
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1.2. Secure Reliable Transport Protocol
Low latency video transmissions across reliable (usually local) IP
based networks typically take the form of MPEG-TS [ISO13818-1]
unicast or multicast streams using the UDP/RTP protocol, where any
packet loss can be mitigated by enabling forward error correction
(FEC). Achieving the same low latency between sites in different
cities, countries or even continents is more challenging. While it
is possible with satellite links or dedicated MPLS [RFC3031]
networks, these are expensive solutions. The use of public Internet
connectivity, while less expensive, imposes significant bandwidth
overhead to achieve the necessary level of packet loss recovery.
Introducing selective packet retransmission (reliable UDP) to recover
from packet loss removes those limitations.
Derived from the UDP-based Data Transfer (UDT) protocol [GHG04b], SRT
is a user-level protocol that retains most of the core concepts and
mechanisms while introducing several refinements and enhancements,
including control packet modifications, improved flow control for
handling live streaming, enhanced congestion control, and a mechanism
for encrypting packets.
SRT is a transport protocol that enables the secure, reliable
transport of data across unpredictable networks, such as the
Internet. While any data type can be transferred via SRT, it is
ideal for low latency (sub-second) video streaming. SRT provides
improved bandwidth utilization compared to RTMP, allowing much higher
contribution bitrates over long distance connections.
As packets are streamed from source to destination, SRT detects and
adapts to the real-time network conditions between the two endpoints,
and helps compensate for jitter and bandwidth fluctuations due to
congestion over noisy networks. Its error recovery mechanism
minimizes the packet loss typical of Internet connections.
To achieve low latency streaming, SRT had to address timing issues.
The characteristics of a stream from a source network are completely
changed by transmission over the public Internet, which introduces
delays, jitter, and packet loss. This, in turn, leads to problems
with decoding, as the audio and video decoders do not receive packets
at the expected times. The use of large buffers helps, but latency
is increased. SRT includes a mechanism to keep a constant end-to-end
latency, thus recreating the signal characteristics on the receiver
side, and reducing the need for buffering.
Like TCP, SRT employs a listener/caller model. The data flow is bi-
directional and independent of the connection initiation - either the
sender or receiver can operate as listener or caller to initiate a
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connection. The protocol provides an internal multiplexing
mechanism, allowing multiple SRT connections to share the same UDP
port, providing access control functionality to identify the caller
on the listener side.
Supporting forward error correction (FEC) and selective packet
retransmission (ARQ), SRT provides the flexibility to use either of
the two mechanisms or both combined, allowing for use cases ranging
from the lowest possible latency to the highest possible reliability.
SRT maintains the ability for fast file transfers introduced in UDT,
and adds support for AES encryption.
2. Terms and Definitions
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
"OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP
14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
capitals, as shown here.
SRT: The Secure Reliable Transport protocol described by this
document.
PRNG: Pseudo-Random Number Generator.
3. Packet Structure
SRT packets are transmitted as UDP payload [RFC0768]. Every UDP
packet carrying SRT traffic contains an SRT header immediately after
the UDP header (Figure 1).
0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| SrcPort | DstPort |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Len | ChkSum |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| |
+ SRT Packet +
| |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 1: SRT packet as UDP payload
SRT has two types of packets distinguished by the Packet Type Flag:
data packet and control packet.
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The structure of the SRT packet is shown in Figure 2.
0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- SRT Header +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
|F| (Field meaning depends on the packet type) |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| (Field meaning depends on the packet type) |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Timestamp |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Destination Socket ID |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| |
+ Packet Contents |
| (depends on the packet type) +
| |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 2: SRT packet structure
F: 1 bit. Packet Type Flag. The control packet has this flag set to
"1". The data packet has this flag set to "0".
Timestamp: 32 bits. The timestamp of the packet, in microseconds.
The value is relative to the time the SRT connection was
established. Depending on the transmission mode (Section 4.2),
the field stores the packet send time or the packet origin time.
Destination Socket ID: 32 bits. A fixed-width field providing the
SRT socket ID to which a packet should be dispatched. The field
may have the special value "0" when the packet is a connection
request.
3.1. Data Packets
The structure of the SRT data packet is shown in Figure 3.
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0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- SRT Header +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
|0| Packet Sequence Number |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
|P P|O|K K|R| Message Number |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Timestamp |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Destination Socket ID |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| |
+ Data +
| |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 3: Data packet structure
Packet Sequence Number: 31 bits. The sequential number of the data
packet.
PP: 2 bits. Packet Position Flag. This field indicates the position
of the data packet in the message. The value "10b" (binary) means
the first packet of the message. "00b" indicates a packet in the
middle. "01b" designates the last packet. If a single data packet
forms the whole message, the value is "11b".
O: 1 bit. Order Flag. Indicates whether the message should be
delivered by the receiver in order (1) or not (0). Certain
restrictions apply depending on the data transmission mode used
(Section 4.2).
KK: 2 bits. Key-based Encryption Flag. The flag bits indicate
whether or not data is encrypted. The value "00b" (binary) means
data is not encrypted. "01b" indicates that data is encrypted with
an even key, and "10b" is used for odd key encryption. Refer to
Section 6. The value "11b" is only used in control packets.
R: 1 bit. Retransmitted Packet Flag. This flag is clear when a
packet is transmitted the first time. The flag is set to "1" when
a packet is retransmitted.
Message Number: 26 bits. The sequential number of consecutive data
packets that form a message (see PP field).
Timestamp: 32 bits. See Section 3.
Destination Socket ID: 32 bits. See Section 3.
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Data: variable length. The payload of the data packet. The length
of the data is the remaining length of the UDP packet.
3.2. Control Packets
An SRT control packet has the following structure.
0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- SRT Header +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
|1| Control Type | Subtype |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Type-specific Information |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Timestamp |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Destination Socket ID |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- CIF -+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| |
+ Control Information Field +
| |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 4: Control packet structure
Control Type: 15 bits. Control Packet Type. The use of these bits
is determined by the control packet type definition. See Table 1.
Subtype: 16 bits. This field specifies an additional subtype for
specific packets. See Table 1.
Type-specific Information: 32 bits. The use of this field depends on
the particular control packet type. Handshake packets do not use
this field.
Timestamp: 32 bits. See Section 3.
Destination Socket ID: 32 bits. See Section 3.
Control Information Field (CIF): variable length. The use of this
field is defined by the Control Type field of the control packet.
The types of SRT control packets are shown in Table 1. The value
"0x7FFF" is reserved for a user-defined type.
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+====================+==============+=========+================+
| Packet Type | Control Type | Subtype | Section |
+====================+==============+=========+================+
| HANDSHAKE | 0x0000 | 0x0 | Section 3.2.1 |
+--------------------+--------------+---------+----------------+
| KEEPALIVE | 0x0001 | 0x0 | Section 3.2.3 |
+--------------------+--------------+---------+----------------+
| ACK | 0x0002 | 0x0 | Section 3.2.4 |
+--------------------+--------------+---------+----------------+
| NAK (Loss Report) | 0x0003 | 0x0 | Section 3.2.5 |
+--------------------+--------------+---------+----------------+
| Congestion Warning | 0x0004 | 0x0 | Section 3.2.6 |
+--------------------+--------------+---------+----------------+
| SHUTDOWN | 0x0005 | 0x0 | Section 3.2.7 |
+--------------------+--------------+---------+----------------+
| ACKACK | 0x0006 | 0x0 | Section 3.2.8 |
+--------------------+--------------+---------+----------------+
| DROPREQ | 0x0007 | 0x0 | Section 3.2.9 |
+--------------------+--------------+---------+----------------+
| PEERERROR | 0x0008 | 0x0 | Section 3.2.10 |
+--------------------+--------------+---------+----------------+
| User-Defined Type | 0x7FFF | - | N/A |
+--------------------+--------------+---------+----------------+
Table 1: SRT control packet types
3.2.1. Handshake
Handshake control packets (Control Type = 0x0000) are used to
exchange peer configurations, to agree on connection parameters, and
to establish a connection.
The Control Information Field (CIF) of a handshake control packet is
shown in Figure 5.
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0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Version |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Encryption Field | Extension Field |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Initial Packet Sequence Number |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Maximum Transmission Unit Size |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Maximum Flow Window Size |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Handshake Type |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| SRT Socket ID |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| SYN Cookie |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| |
+ +
| |
+ Peer IP Address +
| |
+ +
| |
+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
| Extension Type | Extension Length |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| |
+ Extension Contents +
| |
+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
Figure 5: Handshake packet structure
Version: 32 bits. A base protocol version number. Currently used
values are 4 and 5. Values greater than 5 are reserved for future
use.
Encryption Field: 16 bits. Block cipher family and key size. The
values of this field are described in Table 2. The default value
is AES-128.
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+=======+============================+
| Value | Cipher Family and Key Size |
+=======+============================+
| 0 | No Encryption Advertised |
+-------+----------------------------+
| 2 | AES-128 |
+-------+----------------------------+
| 3 | AES-192 |
+-------+----------------------------+
| 4 | AES-256 |
+-------+----------------------------+
Table 2: Handshake Encryption
Field values
Extension Field: 16 bits. This field is message specific extension
related to Handshake Type field. The value MUST be set to 0
except for the following cases. (1) If the handshake control
packet is the INDUCTION message, this field is sent back by the
Listener. (2) In the case of a CONCLUSION message, this field
value should contain a combination of Extension Type values. For
more details, see Section 4.3.1.
+============+========+
| Bitmask | Flag |
+============+========+
| 0x00000001 | HSREQ |
+------------+--------+
| 0x00000002 | KMREQ |
+------------+--------+
| 0x00000004 | CONFIG |
+------------+--------+
Table 3: Handshake
Extension Flags
Initial Packet Sequence Number: 32 bits. The sequence number of the
very first data packet to be sent.
Maximum Transmission Unit Size: 32 bits. This value is typically set
to 1500, which is the default Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) size
for Ethernet, but can be less.
Maximum Flow Window Size: 32 bits. The value of this field is the
maximum number of data packets allowed to be "in flight" (i.e. the
number of sent packets for which an ACK control packet has not yet
been received).
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Handshake Type: 32 bits. This field indicates the handshake packet
type. The possible values are described in Table 4. For more
details refer to Section 4.3.
+============+================+
| Value | Handshake Type |
+============+================+
| 0xFFFFFFFD | DONE |
+------------+----------------+
| 0xFFFFFFFE | AGREEMENT |
+------------+----------------+
| 0xFFFFFFFF | CONCLUSION |
+------------+----------------+
| 0x00000000 | WAVEHAND |
+------------+----------------+
| 0x00000001 | INDUCTION |
+------------+----------------+
Table 4: Handshake Type
SRT Socket ID: 32 bits. This field holds the ID of the source SRT
socket from which a handshake packet is issued.
SYN Cookie: 32 bits. Randomized value for processing a handshake.
The value of this field is specified by the handshake message
type. See Section 4.3.
Peer IP Address: 128 bits. IPv4 or IPv6 address of the packet's
sender. The value consists of four 32-bit fields. In the case of
IPv4 addresses, fields 2, 3 and 4 are filled with zeroes.
Extension Type: 16 bits. The value of this field is used to process
an integrated handshake. Each extension can have a pair of
request and response types.
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+=======+====================+===================+
| Value | Extension Type | HS Extension Flag |
+=======+====================+===================+
| 1 | SRT_CMD_HSREQ | HSREQ |
+-------+--------------------+-------------------+
| 2 | SRT_CMD_HSRSP | HSREQ |
+-------+--------------------+-------------------+
| 3 | SRT_CMD_KMREQ | KMREQ |
+-------+--------------------+-------------------+
| 4 | SRT_CMD_KMRSP | KMREQ |
+-------+--------------------+-------------------+
| 5 | SRT_CMD_SID | CONFIG |
+-------+--------------------+-------------------+
| 6 | SRT_CMD_CONGESTION | CONFIG |
+-------+--------------------+-------------------+
| 7 | SRT_CMD_FILTER | CONFIG |
+-------+--------------------+-------------------+
| 8 | SRT_CMD_GROUP | CONFIG |
+-------+--------------------+-------------------+
Table 5: Handshake Extension Type values
Extension Length: 16 bits. The length of the Extension Contents
field in four-byte blocks.
Extension Contents: variable length. The payload of the extension.
3.2.1.1. Handshake Extension Message
In a Handshake Extension, the value of the Extension Field of the
handshake control packet is defined as 1 for a Handshake Extension
request (SRT_CMD_HSREQ in Table 5), and 2 for a Handshake Extension
response (SRT_CMD_HSRSP in Table 5).
The Extension Contents field of a Handshake Extension Message is
structured as follows:
0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| SRT Version |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| SRT Flags |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Receiver TSBPD Delay | Sender TSBPD Delay |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 6: Handshake Extension Message structure
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SRT Version: 32 bits. SRT library version MUST be formed as major *
0x10000 + minor * 0x100 + patch.
SRT Flags: 32 bits. SRT configuration flags (see Section 3.2.1.1.1).
Receiver TSBPD Delay: 16 bits. Timestamp-Based Packet Delivery
(TSBPD) Delay of the receiver. Refer to Section 4.5.
Sender TSBPD Delay: 16 bits. TSBPD of the sender. Refer to
Section 4.5.
3.2.1.1.1. Handshake Extension Message Flags
+============+===============+
| Bitmask | Flag |
+============+===============+
| 0x00000001 | TSBPDSND |
+------------+---------------+
| 0x00000002 | TSBPDRCV |
+------------+---------------+
| 0x00000004 | CRYPT |
+------------+---------------+
| 0x00000008 | TLPKTDROP |
+------------+---------------+
| 0x00000010 | PERIODICNAK |
+------------+---------------+
| 0x00000020 | REXMITFLG |
+------------+---------------+
| 0x00000040 | STREAM |
+------------+---------------+
| 0x00000080 | PACKET_FILTER |
+------------+---------------+
Table 6: Handshake
Extension Message Flags
* TSBPDSND flag defines if the TSBPD mechanism (Section 4.5) will be
used for sending.
* TSBPDRCV flag defines if the TSBPD mechanism (Section 4.5) will be
used for receiving.
* CRYPT flag MUST be set. It is a legacy flag that indicates the
party understands KK field of the SRT Packet (Figure 3).
* TLPKTDROP flag should be set if too-late packet drop mechanism
will be used during transmission. See Section 4.6.
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* PERIODICNAK flag set indicates the peer will send periodic NAK
packets. See Section 4.8.2.
* REXMITFLG flag MUST be set. It is a legacy flag that indicates
the peer understands the R field of the SRT DATA Packet
(Figure 3).
* STREAM flag identifies the transmission mode (Section 4.2) to be
used in the connection. If the flag is set, the buffer mode
(Section 4.2.2) is used. Otherwise, the message mode
(Section 4.2.1) is used.
* PACKET_FILTER flag indicates if the peer supports packet filter.
3.2.1.2. Key Material Extension Message
If an encrypted connection is being established, the Key Material
(KM) is first transmitted as a Handshake Extension message. This
extension is not supplied for unprotected connections. The purpose
of the extension is to let peers exchange and negotiate encryption-
related information to be used to encrypt and decrypt the payload of
the stream.
The extension can be supplied with the Handshake Extension Type field
set to either SRT_CMD_KMREQ or SRT_CMD_HSRSP (see Table 5 in
Section 3.2.1). For more details refer to Section 4.3.
The KM message is placed in the Extension Contents. See
Section 3.2.2 for the structure of the KM message.
3.2.1.3. Stream ID Extension Message
The Stream ID handshake extension message can be used to identify the
stream content. The Stream ID value can be free-form, but there is
also a recommended convention that can be used to achieve
interoperability.
The Stream ID handshake extension message has SRT_CMD_SID extension
type (see Table 5. The extension contents are a sequence of UTF-8
characters. The maximum allowed size of the StreamID extension is
512 bytes.
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0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| |
| Stream ID |
...
| |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 7: Stream ID Extension Message
The Extension Contents field holds a sequence of UTF-8 characters
(see Figure 7). The maximum allowed size of the StreamID extension
is 512 bytes. The actual size is determined by the Extension Length
field (Figure 5), which defines the length in four byte blocks. If
the actual payload is less than the declared length, the remaining
bytes are set to zeros.
The content is stored as 32-bit little endian words.
3.2.1.4. Group Membership Extension
The Group Membership handshake extension is reserved for the future
and is going to be used to allow multipath SRT connections.
0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Group ID |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Type | Flags | Weight |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 8: Group Membership Extension Message
GroupID: 32 bits. The identifier of a group whose members include
the sender socket that is making a connection. The target socket
that is interpreting GroupID SHOULD belong to the corresponding
group on the target side. If such a group does not exist, the
target socket MAY create it.
Type: 8 bits. Group type, as per SRT_GTYPE_ enumeration:
* 0: undefined group type,
* 1: broadcast group type,
* 2: main/backup group type,
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* 3: balancing group type,
* 4: multicast group type (reserved for future use).
Flags: 8 bits. Special flags mostly reserved for the future. See
Figure 9.
Weight: 16 bits. Special value with interpretation depending on the
Type field value:
* Not used with broadcast group type,
* Defines the link priority for main/backup group type,
* Not yet defined for any other cases (reserved for future use).
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| (zero) |M|
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 9: Group Membership Extension Flags
M: 1 bit. When set, defines synchronization on message numbers,
otherwise transmission is synchronized on sequence numbers.
3.2.2. Key Material
The purpose of the Key Material Message is to let peers exchange
encryption-related information to be used to encrypt and decrypt the
payload of the stream.
This message can be supplied in two possible ways:
* as a Handshake Extension (see Section 3.2.1.2)
* in the Content Information Field of the User-Defined control
packet (described below).
When the Key Material is transmitted as a control packet, the Control
Type field of the SRT packet header is set to User-Defined Type (see
Table 1), the Subtype field of the header is set to SRT_CMD_KMREQ for
key-refresh request and SRT_CMD_KMRSP for key-refresh response
(Table 5). The KM Refresh mechanism is described in Section 6.1.6.
The structure of the Key Material message is illustrated in
Figure 10.
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0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
|S| V | PT | Sign | Resv1 | KK|
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| KEKI |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Cipher | Auth | SE | Resv2 |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Resv3 | SLen/4 | KLen/4 |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Salt |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| |
+ Wrapped Key +
| |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 10: Key Material Message structure
S: 1 bit, value = {0}. This is a fixed-width field that is reserved
for future usage.
Version (V): 3 bits, value = {1}. This is a fixed-width field that
indicates the SRT version:
* 1: Initial version.
Packet Type (PT): 4 bits, value = {2}. This is a fixed-width field
that indicates the Packet Type:
* 0: Reserved
* 1: Media Stream Message (MSmsg)
* 2: Keying Material Message (KMmsg)
* 7: Reserved to discriminate MPEG-TS packet (0x47=sync byte).
Sign: 16 bits, value = {0x2029}. This is a fixed-width field that
contains the signature 'HAI' encoded as a PnP Vendor ID [PNPID]
(in big-endian order).
Resv1: 6 bits, value = {0}. This is a fixed-width field reserved for
flag extension or other usage.
Key-based Encryption (KK): 2 bits. This is a fixed-width field that
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indicates which SEKs (odd and/or even) are provided in the
extension:
* 00b: No SEK is provided (invalid extension format);
* 01b: Even key is provided;
* 10b: Odd key is provided;
* 11b: Both even and odd keys are provided.
Key Encryption Key Index (KEKI): 32 bits, value = {0}. This is a
fixed-width field for specifying the KEK index (big-endian order)
was used to wrap (and optionally authenticate) the SEK(s). The
value 0 is used to indicate the default key of the current stream.
Other values are reserved for the possible use of a key management
system in the future to retrieve a cryptographic context.
* 0: Default stream associated key (stream/system default)
* 1..255: Reserved for manually indexed keys.
Cipher: 8 bits, value = {0..2}. This is a fixed-width field for
specifying encryption cipher and mode:
* 0: None or KEKI indexed crypto context
* 2: AES-CTR [SP800-38A].
Authentication (Auth): 8 bits, value = {0}. This is a fixed-width
field for specifying a message authentication code algorithm:
* 0: None or KEKI indexed crypto context.
Stream Encapsulation (SE): 8 bits, value = {2}. This is a fixed-
width field for describing the stream encapsulation:
* 0: Unspecified or KEKI indexed crypto context
* 1: MPEG-TS/UDP
* 2: MPEG-TS/SRT.
Resv2: 8 bits, value = {0}. This is a fixed-width field reserved for
future use.
Resv3: 16 bits, value = {0}. This is a fixed-width field reserved
for future use.
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SLen/4: 8 bits, value = {4}. This is a fixed-width field for
specifying salt length SLen in bytes divided by 4. Can be zero if
no salt/IV present. The only valid length of salt defined is 128
bits.
KLen/4: 8 bits, value = {4,6,8}. This is a fixed-width field for
specifying SEK length in bytes divided by 4. Size of one key even
if two keys present. MUST match the key size specified in the
Encryption Field of the handshake packet Table 2.
Salt (SLen): SLen * 8 bits, value = { }. This is a variable-width
field that complements the keying material by specifying a salt
key.
Wrap: (64 + n * KLen * 8) bits, value = { }. This is a variable-
width field for specifying Wrapped key(s), where n = (KK + 1)/2
and the size of the wrap field is ((n * KLen) + 8) bytes.
0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| |
+ Integrity Check Vector (ICV) +
| |
+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
| xSEK |
+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
| oSEK |
+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
Figure 11: Unwrapped key structure
ICV: 64 bits. 64-bit Integrity Check Vector(AES key wrap integrity).
This field is used to detect if the keys were unwrapped properly.
If the KEK in hand is invalid, validation fails and unwrapped keys
are discarded.
xSEK: variable width. This field identifies an odd or even SEK. If
only one key is present, the bit set in the KK field tells which
SEK is provided. If both keys are present, then this field is
eSEK (even key) and it is followed by odd key oSEK. The length of
this field is calculated as KLen * 8.
oSEK: variable width. This field with the odd key is present only
when the message carries the two SEKs (identified by he KK field).
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3.2.3. Keep-Alive
Keep-alive control packets are sent after a certain timeout from the
last time any packet (Control or Data) was sent. The purpose of this
control packet is to notify the peer to keep the connection open when
no data exchange is taking place.
The default timeout for a keep-alive packet to be sent is 1 second.
An SRT keep-alive packet is formatted as follows:
0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- SRT Header +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
|1| Control Type | Reserved |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Type-specific Information |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Timestamp |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Destination Socket ID |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 12: Keep-Alive control packet
Packet Type: 1 bit, value = 1. The packet type value of a keep-alive
control packet is "1".
Control Type: 15 bits, value = KEEPALIVE{0x0001}. The control type
value of a keep-alive control packet is "1".
Reserved: 16 bits, value = 0. This is a fixed-width field reserved
for future use.
Type-specific Information. This field is reserved for future
definition.
Timestamp: 32 bits. See Section 3.
Destination Socket ID: 32 bits. See Section 3.
Keep-alive controls packet do not contain Control Information Field
(CIF).
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3.2.4. ACK (Acknowledgment)
Acknowledgment (ACK) control packets are used to provide the delivery
status of data packets. By acknowledging the reception of data
packets up to the acknowledged packet sequence number, the receiver
notifies the sender that all prior packets were received or, in the
case of live streaming (Section 4.2, Section 7.1), preceding missing
packets (if any) were dropped as too late to be delivered
(Section 4.6).
ACK packets may also carry some additional information from the
receiver like the estimates of RTT, RTT variance, link capacity,
receiving speed, etc. The CIF portion of the ACK control packet is
expanded as follows:
0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- SRT Header +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
|1| Control Type | Reserved |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Acknowledgement Number |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Timestamp |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Destination Socket ID |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- CIF -+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Last Acknowledged Packet Sequence Number |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| RTT |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| RTT Variance |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Available Buffer Size |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Packets Receiving Rate |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Estimated Link Capacity |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Receiving Rate |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 13: ACK control packet
Packet Type: 1 bit, value = 1. The packet type value of an ACK
control packet is "1".
Control Type: 15 bits, value = ACK{0x0002}. The control type value
of an ACK control packet is "2".
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Reserved: 16 bits, value = 0. This is a fixed-width field reserved
for future use.
Acknowledgement Number: 32 bits. This field contains the sequential
number of the full acknowledgment packet starting from 1.
Timestamp: 32 bits. See Section 3.
Destination Socket ID: 32 bits. See Section 3.
Last Acknowledged Packet Sequence Number: 32 bits. This field
contains the sequence number of the last data packet being
acknowledged plus one. In other words, if it the sequence number
of the first unacknowledged packet.
RTT: 32 bits. RTT value, in microseconds, estimated by the receiver
based on the previous ACK/ACKACK packet pair exchange.
RTT Variance: 32 bits. The variance of the RTT estimate, in
microseconds.
Available Buffer Size: 32 bits. Available size of the receiver's
buffer, in packets.
Packets Receiving Rate: 32 bits. The rate at which packets are being
received, in packets per second.
Estimated Link Capacity: 32 bits. Estimated bandwidth of the link,
in packets per second.
Receiving Rate: 32 bits. Estimated receiving rate, in bytes per
second.
There are several types of ACK packets:
* A Full ACK control packet is sent every 10 ms and has all the
fields of Figure 13.
* A Light ACK control packet includes only the Last Acknowledged
Packet Sequence Number field. The Type-specific Information field
should be set to 0.
* A Small ACK includes the fields up to and including the Available
Buffer Size field. The Type-specific Information field should be
set to 0.
The sender only acknowledges the receipt of Full ACK packets (see
Section 3.2.8).
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The Light ACK and Small ACK packets are used in cases when the
receiver should acknowledge received data packets more often than
every 10 ms. This is usually needed at high data rates. It is up to
the receiver to decide the condition and the type of ACK packet to
send (Light or Small). The recommendation is to send a Light ACK for
every 64 packets received.
3.2.5. NAK (Negative Acknowledgement or Loss Report)
Negative acknowledgment (NAK) control packets are used to signal
failed data packet deliveries. The receiver notifies the sender
about lost data packets by sending a NAK packet that contains a list
of sequence numbers for those lost packets.
An SRT NAK packet is formatted as follows:
0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- SRT Header +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
|1| Control Type | Reserved |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Type-specific Information |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Timestamp |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Destination Socket ID |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- CIF (Loss List) -+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
|0| Lost packet sequence number |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
|1| Range of lost packets from sequence number |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
|0| Up to sequence number |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
|0| Lost packet sequence number |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 14: NAK control packet
Packet Type: 1 bit, value = 1. The packet type value of a NAK
control packet is "1".
Control Type: 15 bits, value = NAK{0x0003}. The control type value
of a NAK control packet is "3".
Reserved: 16 bits, value = 0. This is a fixed-width field reserved
for future use.
Type-specific Information: 32 bits. This field is reserved for
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future definition.
Timestamp: 32 bits. See Section 3.
Destination Socket ID: 32 bits. See Section 3.
Control Information Field (CIF). A single value or a range of lost
packets sequence numbers. See packet sequence number coding in
Appendix A.
3.2.6. Congestion Warning
The Congestion Warning control packet is reserved for future use.
Its purpose is to allow a receiver to signal a sender that there is
congestion happening at the receiving side. The expected behaviour
is that upon receiving this packet the sender slows down its sending
rate by increasing the minimum inter-packet sending interval by a
discrete value (posited to be 12.5%).
Note that the conditions for a receiver to issue this type of packet
are not yet defined.
0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- SRT Header +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
|1| Control Type = 4 | Reserved = 0 |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Type-specific Information = 0 |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Timestamp |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Destination Socket ID |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 15: Congestion Warning control packet
Packet Type: 1 bit, value = 1. The packet type value of a Congestion
Warning control packet is "1".
Control Type: 15 bits, value = 4. The control type value of a
Congestion Warning control packet is "4".
Timestamp: 32 bits. See Section 3.
Destination Socket ID: 32 bits. See Section 3.
Type-specific Information. This field is reserved for future
definition.
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3.2.7. Shutdown
Shutdown control packets are used to initiate the closing of an SRT
connection.
An SRT shutdown control packet is formatted as follows:
0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- SRT Header +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
|1| Control Type | Reserved |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Type-specific Information |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Timestamp |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Destination Socket ID |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 16: Shutdown control packet
Packet Type: 1 bit, value = 1. The packet type value of a shutdown
control packet is "1".
Control Type: 15 bits, value = SHUTDOWN{0x0005}. The control type
value of a shutdown control packet is "5".
Timestamp: 32 bits. See Section 3.
Destination Socket ID: 32 bits. See Section 3.
Type-specific Information. This field is reserved for future
definition.
Shutdown control packets do not contain Control Information Field
(CIF).
3.2.8. ACKACK (Acknowledgement of Acknowledgement)
Acknowledgement of Acknowledgement (ACKACK) control packets are sent
to acknowledge the reception of a Full ACK and used in the
calculation of the round-trip time by the SRT receiver.
An SRT ACKACK control packet is formatted as follows:
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0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- SRT Header +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
|1| Control Type | Reserved |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Acknowledgement Number |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Timestamp |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Destination Socket ID |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 17: ACKACK control packet
Packet Type: 1 bit, value = 1. The packet type value of an ACKACK
control packet is "1".
Control Type: 15 bits, value = ACKACK{0x0006}. The control type
value of an ACKACK control packet is "6".
Acknowledgement Number. This field contains the Acknowledgement
Number of the full ACK packet the reception of which is being
acknowledged by this ACKACK packet.
Timestamp: 32 bits. See Section 3.
Destination Socket ID: 32 bits. See Section 3.
ACKACK control packets do not contain Control Information Field
(CIF).
3.2.9. Message Drop Request
A Message Drop Request control packet is sent by the sender to the
receiver when a retransmission of an unacknowledged packet (forming a
whole or a part of a message) which is not present in the sender's
buffer is requested. This may happen, for example, when a TTL
parameter (passed in the sending function) triggers a timeout for
retransmitting one or more lost packets which constitute parts of a
message, causing these packets to be removed from the sender's
buffer.
The sender notifies the receiver that it must not wait for
retransmission of this message. Note that a Message Drop Request
control packet is not sent if the Too Late Packet Drop mechanism
(Section 4.6) causes the sender to drop a message, as in this case
the receiver is expected to drop it anyway.
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A Message Drop Request contains the message number and corresponding
range of packet sequence numbers which form the whole message. If
the sender does not already have in its buffer the specific packet or
packets for which retransmission was requested, then it is unable to
restore the message number. In this case the Message Number field
must be set to zero, and the receiver should drop packets in the
provided packet sequence number range.
0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- SRT Header +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
|1| Control Type = 7 | Reserved = 0 |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Message Number |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Timestamp |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Destination Socket ID |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| First Packet Sequence Number |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Last Packet Sequence Number |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 18: Drop Request control packet
Packet Type: 1 bit, value = 1. The packet type value of a Drop
Request control packet is "1".
Control Type: 15 bits, value = 7. The control type value of a Drop
Request control packet is "7".
Message Number: 32 bits. The identifying number of the message
requested to be dropped. See the Message Number field in
Section 3.1.
Timestamp: 32 bits. See Section 3.
Destination Socket ID: 32 bits. See Section 3.
First Packet Sequence Number: 32 bits. The sequence number of the
first packet in the message.
Last Packet Sequence Number: 32 bits. The sequence number of the
last packet in the message.
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3.2.10. Peer Error
The Peer Error control packet is sent by a receiver when a processing
error (e.g. write to disk failure) occurs. This informs the sender
of the situation and unblocks it from waiting for further responses
from the receiver.
The sender receiving this type of control packet must unblock any
sending operation in progress.
*NOTE*: This control packet is only used if the File Transfer
Congestion Control (Section 5.2) is enabled.
0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- SRT Header +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
|1| Control Type = 8 | Reserved = 0 |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Error Code |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Timestamp |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Destination Socket ID |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 19: Peer Error control packet
Packet Type: 1 bit, value = 1. The packet type value of a Peer Error
control packet is "1".
Control Type: 15 bits, value = 8. The control type value of a Peer
Error control packet is "8".
Error Code: 32 bits. Peer error code. At the moment the only value
defined is 4000 - file system error.
Timestamp: 32 bits. See Section 3.
Destination Socket ID: 32 bits. See Section 3.
4. SRT Data Transmission and Control
This section describes key concepts related to the handling of
control and data packets during the transmission process.
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After the handshake and exchange of capabilities is completed, packet
data can be sent and received over the established connection. To
fully utilize the features of low latency and error recovery provided
by SRT, the sender and receiver must handle control packets, timers,
and buffers for the connection as specified in this section.
4.1. Stream Multiplexing
Multiple SRT sockets may share the same UDP socket so that the
packets received to this UDP socket will be correctly dispatched to
those SRT sockets they are currently destined.
During the handshake, the parties exchange their SRT Socket IDs.
These IDs are then used in the Destination Socket ID field of every
control and data packet (see Section 3).
4.2. Data Transmission Modes
There are two data transmission modes supported by SRT: message mode
(Section 4.2.1) and buffer mode (Section 4.2.2). These are the modes
originally defined in the UDT protocol [GHG04b].
As SRT has been mainly designed for live video and audio streaming,
its main and default transmission mode is message mode with certain
settings applied (Section 7.1).
Besides live streaming, SRT maintains the ability for fast file
transfers introduced in UDT (Section 7.2). The usage of both message
and buffer modes is possible in this case.
Best practices and configuration tips for both use cases can be found
in Section 7.
4.2.1. Message Mode
When the STREAM flag of the handshake Extension Message
Section 3.2.1.1 is set to 0, the protocol operates in Message mode,
characterized as follows:
* Every packet has its own Packet Sequence Number.
* One or several consecutive SRT data packets can form a message.
* All the packets belonging to the same message have a similar
message number set in the Message Number field.
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The first packet of a message has the first bit of the Packet
Position Flags (Section 3.1) set to 1. The last packet of the
message has the second bit of the Packet Position Flags set to 1.
Thus, a PP equal to "11b" indicates a packet that forms the whole
message. A PP equal to "00b" indicates a packet that belongs to the
inner part of the message.
The concept of the message in SRT comes from UDT [GHG04b]. In this
mode, a single sending instruction passes exactly one piece of data
that has boundaries (a message). This message may span multiple UDP
packets and multiple SRT data packets. The only size limitation is
that it shall fit as a whole in the buffers of the sender and the
receiver. Although internally all operations (e.g., ACK, NAK) on
data packets are performed independently, an application must send
and receive the whole message. Until the message is complete (all
packets are received) the application will not be allowed to read it.
When the Order Flag of a data packet is set to 1, this imposes a
sequential reading order on messages. An Order Flag set to 0 allows
an application to read messages that are already fully available,
before any preceding messages that may have some packets missing.
4.2.2. Buffer Mode
Buffer mode is negotiated during the handshake by setting the STREAM
flag of the handshake Extension Message Flags (Section 3.2.1.1.1) to
1.
In this mode, consecutive packets form one continuous stream that can
be read with portions of any size.
4.3. Handshake Messages
SRT is a connection-oriented protocol. It embraces the concepts of
"connection" and "session". The UDP system protocol is used by SRT
for sending data and control packets.
An SRT connection is characterized by the fact that it is:
* first engaged by a handshake process,
* maintained as long as any packets are being exchanged in a timely
manner, and
* considered closed when a party receives the appropriate close
command from its peer (connection closed by the foreign host), or
when it receives no packets at all for some predefined time
(connection broken on timeout).
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SRT supports two connection configurations:
1. Caller-Listener, where one side waits for the other to initiate a
connection;
2. Rendezvous, where both sides attempt to initiate a connection.
The handshake is performed between two parties: "Initiator" and
"Responder" in the following order:
* Initiator starts an extended SRT handshake process and sends
appropriate SRT extended handshake requests.
* Responder expects the SRT extended handshake requests to be sent
by the Initiator and sends SRT extended handshake responses back.
There are three basic types of SRT handshake extensions that are
exchanged in the handshake:
* Handshake Extension Message exchanges the basic SRT information;
* Key Material Exchange exchanges the wrapped stream encryption key
(used only if an encryption is requested).
* Stream ID extension exchanges some stream-specific information
that can be used by the application to identify an incoming stream
connection.
The Initiator and Responder roles are assigned depending on the
connection mode.
For Caller-Listener connections: the Caller is the Initiator, the
Listener is the Responder. For Rendezvous connections: the Initiator
and Responder roles are assigned based on the initial data
interchange during the handshake.
The Handshake Type field in the Handshake Structure (see Figure 5)
indicates the handshake message type.
Caller-Listener handshake exchange has the following order of
Handshake Types:
1. Caller to Listener: INDUCTION
2. Listener to Caller: INDUCTION (reports cookie)
3. Caller to Listener: CONCLUSION (uses previously returned cookie)
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4. Listener to Caller: CONCLUSION (confirms connection established).
Rendezvous handshake exchange has the following order of Handshake
Types:
1. After starting the connection: WAVEAHAND
2. After receiving the above message from the peer: CONCLUSION
3. After receiving the above message from the peer: AGREEMENT.
When a connection process has failed before either party can send the
CONCLUSION handshake, the Handshake Type field will contain the
appropriate error value for the rejected connection. See the list of
error codes in Table 7.
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+======+================+=========================================+
| Code | Error | Description |
+======+================+=========================================+
| 1000 | REJ_UNKNOWN | Unknown reason |
+------+----------------+-----------------------------------------+
| 1001 | REJ_SYSTEM | System function error |
+------+----------------+-----------------------------------------+
| 1002 | REJ_PEER | Rejected by peer |
+------+----------------+-----------------------------------------+
| 1003 | REJ_RESOURCE | Resource allocation problem |
+------+----------------+-----------------------------------------+
| 1004 | REJ_ROGUE | incorrect data in handshake |
+------+----------------+-----------------------------------------+
| 1005 | REJ_BACKLOG | listener's backlog exceeded |
+------+----------------+-----------------------------------------+
| 1006 | REJ_IPE | internal program error |
+------+----------------+-----------------------------------------+
| 1007 | REJ_CLOSE | socket is closing |
+------+----------------+-----------------------------------------+
| 1008 | REJ_VERSION | peer is older version than agent's min |
+------+----------------+-----------------------------------------+
| 1009 | REJ_RDVCOOKIE | rendezvous cookie collision |
+------+----------------+-----------------------------------------+
| 1010 | REJ_BADSECRET | wrong password |
+------+----------------+-----------------------------------------+
| 1011 | REJ_UNSECURE | password required or unexpected |
+------+----------------+-----------------------------------------+
| 1012 | REJ_MESSAGEAPI | Stream flag collision |
+------+----------------+-----------------------------------------+
| 1013 | REJ_CONGESTION | incompatible congestion-controller type |
+------+----------------+-----------------------------------------+
| 1014 | REJ_FILTER | incompatible packet filter |
+------+----------------+-----------------------------------------+
| 1015 | REJ_GROUP | incompatible group |
+------+----------------+-----------------------------------------+
Table 7: Handshake Rejection Reason codes
The specification of the cipher family and block size is decided by
the data Sender. When the transmission is bidirectional, this value
MUST be agreed upon at the outset because when both are set the
Responder wins. For Caller-Listener connections it is reasonable to
set this value on the Listener only. In the case of Rendezvous the
only reasonable approach is to decide upon the correct value from the
different sources and to set it on both parties (note that *AES-128*
is the default).
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4.3.1. Caller-Listener Handshake
This section describes the handshaking process where a Listener is
waiting for an incoming Handshake request on a bound UDP port from a
Caller. The process has two phases: induction and conclusion.
4.3.1.1. The Induction Phase
The INDUCTION phase serves only to set a cookie on the Listener so
that it doesn't allocate resources, thus mitigating a potential DoS
attack that might be perpetrated by flooding the Listener with
handshake commands.
The Caller begins by sending the INDUCTION handshake which contains
the following significant fields:
* Version: MUST always be 4
* Encryption Field: 0
* Extension Field: 2
* Handshake Type: INDUCTION
* SRT Socket ID: SRT Socket ID of the Caller
* SYN Cookie: 0.
The Destination Socket ID of the SRT packet header in this message is
0, which is interpreted as a connection request.
The handshake version number is set to 4 in this initial handshake.
This is due to the initial design of SRT that was to be compliant
with the UDT protocol [GHG04b] on which it is based.
The Listener responds with the following:
* Version: 5
* Encryption Field: Advertised cipher family and block size
* Extension Field: SRT magic code 0x4A17
* Handshake Type: INDUCTION
* SRT Socket ID: Socket ID of the Listener
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* SYN Cookie: a cookie that is crafted based on host, port and
current time with 1 minute accuracy to avoid SYN flooding attack
[RFC4987].
At this point the Listener still does not know if the Caller is SRT
or UDT, and it responds with the same set of values regardless of
whether the Caller is SRT or UDT.
If the party is SRT, it does interpret the values in Version and
Extension Field. If it receives the value 5 in Version, it
understands that it comes from an SRT party, so it knows that it
should prepare the proper handshake messages phase. It also checks
the following:
* whether the Extension Flags contains the magic value 0x4A17;
otherwise the connection is rejected. This is a contingency for
the case where someone who, in an attempt to extend UDT
independently, increases the Version value to 5 and tries to test
it against SRT;
* whether the Encryption Flags contain a non-zero value, which is
interpreted as an advertised cipher family and block size.
A legacy UDT party completely ignores the values reported in Version
and Handshake Type. It is, however, interested in the SYN Cookie
value, as this must be passed to the next phase. It does interpret
these fields, but only in the "conclusion" message.
4.3.1.2. The Conclusion Phase
Once the Caller gets the SYN cookie from the Listener, it sends the
CONCLUSION handshake to the Listener.
The following values are set by the compliant Caller:
* Version: 5
* Handshake Type: CONCLUSION
* SRT Socket ID: Socket ID of the Caller
* SYN Cookie: the cookie previously received in the induction phase
* Encryption Flags: advertised cipher family and block size
* Extension Flags: a set of flags that define the extensions
provided in the handshake
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* The Destination Socket ID in this message is the socket ID that
was previously received in the induction phase in the SRT Socket
ID field of the handshake structure.
The Listener responds with the same values shown above, without the
cookie (which is not needed here), as well as the extensions for HS
Version 5 (which will probably be exactly the same).
There is not any "negotiation" here. If the values passed in the
handshake are in any way not acceptable by the other side, the
connection will be rejected. The only case when the Listener can
have precedence over the Caller is the advertised Cipher Family and
Block Size (see Table 2) in the Encryption Field of the Handshake.
The value for latency is always agreed to be the greater of those
reported by each party.
4.3.2. Rendezvous Handshake
The Rendezvous process uses a state machine. It is slightly
different from UDT Rendezvous handshake [GHG04b], although it is
still based on the same message request types.
Both parties start with WAVEAHAND and use the Version value of 5.
Legacy Version 4 clients do not look at the Version value, whereas
Version 5 clients can detect version 5. The parties only continue
with the Version 5 Rendezvous process when Version is set to 5 for
both. Otherwise the process continues exclusively according to
Version 4 rules [GHG04b].
With Version 5 Rendezvous, both parties create a cookie for a process
called the "cookie contest". This is necessary for the assignment of
Initiator and Responder roles. Each party generates a cookie value
(a 32-bit number) based on the host, port, and current time with 1
minute accuracy. This value is scrambled using an MD5 sum
calculation. The cookie values are then compared with one another.
Since it is impossible to have two sockets on the same machine bound
to the same NIC and port and operating independently, it is virtually
impossible that the parties will generate identical cookies.
However, this situation may occur if an application tries to "connect
to itself" - that is, either connects to a local IP address, when the
socket is bound to INADDR_ANY, or to the same IP address to which the
socket was bound. If the cookies are identical (for any reason), the
connection will not be made until new, unique cookies are generated
(after a delay of up to one minute). In the case of an application
"connecting to itself", the cookies will always be identical, and so
the connection will never be established.
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When one party's cookie value is greater than its peer's, it wins the
cookie contest and becomes Initiator (the other party becomes the
Responder).
At this point there are two possible "handshake flows": serial and
parallel.
4.3.2.1. Serial Handshake Flow
In the serial handshake flow, one party is always first, and the
other follows. That is, while both parties are repeatedly sending
WAVEAHAND messages, at some point one party - let's say Alice - will
find she has received a WAVEAHAND message before she can send her
next one, so she sends a CONCLUSION message in response. Meantime,
Bob (Alice's peer) has missed Alice's WAVEAHAND messages, so that
Alice's CONCLUSION is the first message Bob has received from her.
This process can be described easily as a series of exchanges between
the first and following parties (Alice and Bob, respectively):
1. Initially, both parties are in the waving state. Alice sends a
handshake message to Bob:
* Version: 5
* Type: Extension field: 0, Encryption field: advertised
"PBKEYLEN"
* Handshake Type: WAVEAHAND
* SRT Socket ID: Alice's socket ID
* SYN Cookie: Created based on host/port and current time.
While Alice does not yet know if she is sending this message to a
Version 4 or Version 5 peer, the values from these fields would
not be interpreted by the Version 4 peer when the Handshake Type
is WAVEAHAND.
2. Bob receives Alice's WAVEAHAND message, switches to the
"attention" state. Since Bob now knows Alice's cookie, he
performs a "cookie contest" (compares both cookie values). If
Bob's cookie is greater than Alice's, he will become the
Initiator. Otherwise, he will become the Responder.
The resolution of the Handshake Role (Initiator or Responder) is
essential for further processing.
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Then Bob responds:
* Version: 5
* Extension field: appropriate flags if Initiator, otherwise 0
* Encryption field: advertised PBKEYLEN
* Handshake Type: CONCLUSION.
If Bob is the Initiator and encryption is on, he will use either
his own cipher family and block size or the one received from
Alice (if she has advertised those values).
3. Alice receives Bob's CONCLUSION message. While at this point she
also performs the "cookie contest", the outcome will be the same.
She switches to the "fine" state, and sends:
* Version: 5
* Appropriate extension flags and encryption flags
* Handshake Type: CONCLUSION.
Both parties always send extension flags at this point, which
will contain HSREQ if the message comes from an Initiator, or
HSRSP if it comes from a Responder. If the Initiator has
received a previous message from the Responder containing an
advertised cipher family and block size in the encryption flags
field, it will be used as the key length for key generation sent
next in the KMREQ extension.
4. Bob receives Alice's CONCLUSION message, and then does one of the
following (depending on Bob's role):
* If Bob is the Initiator (Alice's message contains HSRSP), he:
- switches to the "connected" state, and
- sends Alice a message with Handshake Type AGREEMENT, but
containing no SRT extensions (Extension Flags field should
be 0).
* If Bob is the Responder (Alice's message contains HSREQ), he:
- switches to "initiated" state,
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- sends Alice a message with Handshake Type CONCLUSION that
also contains extensions with HSRSP, and
- awaits a confirmation from Alice that she is also connected
(preferably by AGREEMENT message).
5. Alice receives the above message, enters into the "connected"
state, and then does one of the following (depending on Alice's
role):
* If Alice is the Initiator (received CONCLUSION with HSRSP),
she sends Bob a message with Handshake Type = AGREEMENT.
* If Alice is the Responder, the received message has Handshake
Type AGREEMENT and in response she does nothing.
6. At this point, if Bob was an Initiator, he is connected already.
If he was a Responder, he should receive the above AGREEMENT
message, after which he switches to the "connected" state. In
the case where the UDP packet with the agreement message gets
lost, Bob will still enter the "connected" state once he receives
anything else from Alice. If Bob is going to send, however, he
has to continue sending the same CONCLUSION until he gets the
confirmation from Alice.
4.3.2.2. Parallel Handshake Flow
The chances of the parallel handshake flow are very low, but still it
may occur if the handshake messages with WAVEAHAND are sent and
received by both peers at precisely the same time.
The resulting flow is very much like Bob's behaviour in the serial
handshake flow, but for both parties. Alice and Bob will go through
the same state transitions:
Waving -> Attention -> Initiated -> Connected
In the Attention state they know each other's cookies, so they can
assign roles. In contrast to serial flows, which are mostly based on
request-response cycles, here everything happens completely
asynchronously: the state switches upon reception of a particular
handshake message with appropriate contents (the Initiator MUST
attach the HSREQ extension, and Responder MUST attach the "HSRSP"
extension).
Here is how the parallel handshake flow works, based on roles and
states:
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(1) Initiator
1. Waving
* Receives WAVEAHAND message,
* Switches to Attention,
* Sends CONCLUSION + HSREQ.
2. Attention
Receives CONCLUSION message which
* either contains no extensions, then switches to Initiated,
still sends CONCLUSION + HSREQ; or
* contains "HSRSP" extension, then switches to Connected, sends
AGREEMENT.
3. Initiated
Receives CONCLUSION message, which
* either contains no extensions, then REMAINS IN THIS STATE,
still sends CONCLUSION + HSREQ; or
* contains "HSRSP" extension, then switches to Connected, sends
AGREEMENT.
4. Connected
May receive CONCLUSION and respond with AGREEMENT, but normally
by now it should already have received payload packets.
(2) Responder
1. Waving
* Receives WAVEAHAND message,
* Switches to Attention,
* Sends CONCLUSION message (with no extensions).
2. Attention
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* Receives CONCLUSION message with HSREQ. This message might
contain no extensions, in which case the party SHALL simply
send the empty CONCLUSION message, as before, and remain in
this state.
* Switches to Initiated and sends CONCLUSION message with HSRSP.
3. Initiated
Receives:
* CONCLUSION message with HSREQ, then responds with CONCLUSION
with HSRSP and remains in this state;
* AGREEMENT message, then responds with AGREEMENT and switches
to Connected;
* Payload packet, then responds with AGREEMENT and switches to
Connected.
4. Connected
Is not expecting to receive any handshake messages anymore. The
AGREEMENT message is always sent only once or per every final
CONCLUSION message.
Note that any of these packets may be missing, and the sending party
will never become aware. The missing packet problem is resolved this
way:
1. If the Responder misses the CONCLUSION + HSREQ message, it simply
continues sending empty CONCLUSION messages. Only upon reception
of CONCLUSION + HSREQ it does respond with CONCLUSION + HSRSP.
2. If the Initiator misses the CONCLUSION + HSRSP response from the
Responder, it continues sending CONCLUSION + HSREQ. The
Responder MUST always respond with CONCLUSION + HSRSP when the
Initiator sends CONCLUSION + HSREQ, even if it has already
received and interpreted it.
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3. When the Initiator switches to the Connected state it responds
with a AGREEMENT message, which may be missed by the Responder.
Nonetheless, the Initiator may start sending data packets because
it considers itself connected - it does not know that the
Responder has not yet switched to the Connected state. Therefore
it is exceptionally allowed that when the Responder is in the
Initiated state and receives a data packet (or any control packet
that is normally sent only between connected parties) over this
connection, it may switch to the Connected state just as if it
had received a AGREEMENT message.
4. If the the Initiator has already switched to the Connected state
it will not bother the Responder with any more handshake
messages. But the Responder may be completely unaware of that
(having missed the AGREEMENT message from the Initiator).
Therefore it does not exit the connecting state, which means that
it continues sending CONCLUSION + HSRSP messages until it
receives any packet that will make it switch to the Connected
state (normally AGREEMENT). Only then does it exit the
connecting state and the application can start transmission.
4.4. SRT Buffer Latency
The SRT sender and receiver have buffers to store packets.
On the sender, latency is the time that SRT holds a packet to give it
a chance to be delivered successfully while maintaining the rate of
the sender at the receiver. If an acknowledgment (ACK) is missing or
late for more than the configured latency, the packet is dropped from
the sender buffer. A packet can be retransmitted as long as it
remains in the buffer for the duration of the latency window. On the
receiver, packets are delivered to an application from a buffer after
the latency interval has passed. This helps to recover from
potential packet losses. See Section 4.5, Section 4.6 for details.
Latency is a value, in milliseconds, that can cover the time to
transmit hundreds or even thousands of packets at high bitrate.
Latency can be thought of as a window that slides over time, during
which a number of activities take place, such as the reporting of
acknowledged packets (ACKs) (Section 4.8.1) and unacknowledged
packets (NAKs) (Section 4.8.2).
Latency is configured through the exchange of capabilities during the
extended handshake process between initiator and responder. The
Handshake Extension Message (Section 3.2.1.1) has TSBPD delay
information, in milliseconds, from the SRT receiver and sender. The
latency for a connection will be established as the maximum value of
latencies proposed by the initiator and responder.
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4.5. Timestamp-Based Packet Delivery
The goal of the SRT Timestamp-Based Packet Delivery (TSBPD) mechanism
is to reproduce the output of the sending application (e.g., encoder)
at the input of the receiving application (e.g., decoder) in the case
of live streaming (Section 4.2, Section 7.1). It attempts to
reproduce the timing of packets committed by the sending application
to the SRT sender. This allows packets to be scheduled for delivery
by the SRT receiver, making them ready to be read by the receiving
application (see Figure 20).
The SRT receiver, using the timestamp of the SRT data packet header,
delivers packets to a receiving application with a fixed minimum
delay from the time the packet was scheduled for sending on the SRT
sender side. Basically, the sender timestamp in the received packet
is adjusted to the receiver's local time (compensating for the time
drift or different time zones) before releasing the packet to the
application. Packets can be withheld by the SRT receiver for a
configured receiver delay. A higher delay can accommodate a larger
uniform packet drop rate, or a larger packet burst drop. Packets
received after their "play time" are dropped if the Too-Late Packet
Drop feature is enabled (Section 4.6). For example, in the case of
live video streaming, TSBPD and Too-Late Packet Drop mechanisms allow
to intentionally drop those packets that were lost and have no chance
to be retransmitted before their play time. Thus, SRT provides a
fixed end-to-end latency of the stream.
The packet timestamp, in microseconds, is relative to the SRT
connection creation time. Packets are inserted based on the sequence
number in the header field. The origin time, in microseconds, of the
packet is already sampled when a packet is first submitted by the
application to the SRT sender unless explicitly provided. The TSBPD
feature uses this time to stamp the packet for first transmission and
any subsequent retransmission. This timestamp and the configured SRT
latency (Section 4.4) control the recovery buffer size and the
instant that packets are delivered at the destination (the
aforementioned "play time" which is decided by adding the timestamp
to the configured latency).
It is worth mentioning that the use of the packet sending time to
stamp the packets is inappropriate for the TSBPD feature, since a new
time (current sending time) is used for retransmitted packets,
putting them out of order when inserted at their proper place in the
stream.
Figure 20 illustrates the key latency points during the packet
transmission with the TSBPD feature enabled.
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| Sending | | |
| Delay | ~RTT/2 | SRT Latency |
|<--------->|<------------>|<----------------->|
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
___ Scheduled Sent Received Scheduled
/ for sending | | for delivery
Packet | | | |
State | | | |
| | | |
| | | |
----------------------------------------------------->
Time
Figure 20: Key latency points during the packet transmission
The main packet states shown in Figure 20 are the following:
* "Scheduled for sending": the packet is committed by the sending
application, stamped and ready to be sent;
* "Sent": the packet is passed to the UDP socket and sent;
* "Received": the packet is received and read from the UDP socket;
* "Scheduled for delivery": the packet is scheduled for the delivery
and ready to be read by the receiving application.
It is worth noting that the round-trip time (RTT) of an SRT link may
vary in time. However the actual end-to-end latency on the link
becomes fixed and is approximately equal to (RTT_0/2 + SRT Latency)
once the SRT handshake exchange happens, where RTT_0 is the actual
value of the round-trip time during the SRT handshake exchange (the
value of the round-trip time once the SRT connection has been
established).
The value of sending delay depends on the hardware performance.
Usually it is relatively small (several microseconds) in contrast to
RTT_0/2 and SRT latency which are measured in milliseconds.
4.5.1. Packet Delivery Time
Packet delivery time is the moment, estimated by the receiver, when a
packet should be delivered to the upstream application. The
calculation of packet delivery time (PktTsbpdTime) is performed upon
receiving a data packet according to the following formula:
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PktTsbpdTime = TsbpdTimeBase + PKT_TIMESTAMP + TsbpdDelay + Drift
where
* TsbpdTimeBase is the time base that reflects the time difference
between local clock of the receiver and the clock used by the
sender to timestamp packets being sent (see Section 4.5.1.1);
* PKT_TIMESTAMP is the data packet timestamp, in microseconds;
* TsbpdDelay is the receiver's buffer delay (or receiver's buffer
latency, or SRT Latency). This is the time, in milliseconds, that
SRT holds a packet from the moment it has been received till the
time it should be delivered to the upstream application;
* Drift is the time drift used to adjust the fluctuations between
sender and receiver clock, in microseconds.
SRT Latency (TsbpdDelay) should be a buffer time large enough to
cover the unexpectedly extended RTT time, and the time needed to
retransmit the lost packet. The value of minimum TsbpdDelay is
negotiated during the SRT handshake exchange and is equal to 120
milliseconds. The recommended value of TsbpdDelay is 3-4 times RTT.
It is worth noting that TsbpdDelay limits the number of packet
retransmissions to a certain extent making it impossible to
retransmit packets endlessly. This is important for the case of live
streaming (Section 4.2, Section 7.1).
4.5.1.1. TSBPD Time Base Calculation
The initial value of TSBPD time base (TsbpdTimeBase) is calculated at
the moment of the second handshake request is received as follows:
TsbpdTimeBase = T_NOW - HSREQ_TIMESTAMP
where T_NOW is the current time according to the receiver clock;
HSREQ_TIMESTAMP is the handshake packet timestamp, in microseconds.
The value of TsbpdTimeBase is approximately equal to the initial one-
way delay of the link RTT_0/2, where RTT_0 is the actual value of the
round-trip time during the SRT handshake exchange.
During the transmission process, the value of TSBPD time base may be
adjusted in two cases:
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1. During the TSBPD wrapping period. The TSBPD wrapping period
happens every 01:11:35 hours. This time corresponds to the
maximum timestamp value of a packet (MAX_TIMESTAMP).
MAX_TIMESTAMP is equal to 0xFFFFFFFF, or the maximum value of
32-bit unsigned integer, in microseconds (Section 3). The TSBPD
wrapping period starts 30 seconds before reaching the maximum
timestamp value of a packet and ends once the packet with
timestamp within (30, 60) seconds interval is delivered (read
from the buffer). The updated value of TsbpdTimeBase will be
recalculated as follows:
TsbpdTimeBase = TsbpdTimeBase + MAX_TIMESTAMP + 1
2. By drift tracer. See Section 4.7 for details.
4.6. Too-Late Packet Drop
The Too-Late Packet Drop (TLPKTDROP) mechanism allows the sender to
drop packets that have no chance to be delivered in time, and allows
the receiver to skip missing packets that have not been delivered in
time. The timeout of dropping a packet is based on the TSBPD
mechanism (Section 4.5).
When the TLPKTDROP mechanism is enabled, a packet is considered "too
late" to be delivered and may be dropped by the sender if the packet
timestamp is older than TLPKTDROP_THRESHOLD.
TLPKTDROP_THRESHOLD is related to SRT latency (Section 4.4). For the
Too-Late Packet Drop mechanism to function effectively, it is
recommended that a value higher than the SRT latency is used. This
will allow the SRT receiver to drop missing packets first while the
sender drops packets if a proper response is not received from the
peer in time (e.g., due to severe congestion). The recommended
threshold value is 1.25 times the SRT latency value.
Note that the SRT sender keeps packets for at least 1 second in case
the latency is not high enough for a large RTT (that is, if
TLPKTDROP_THRESHOLD is less than 1 second).
When enabled on the receiver, the receiver drops packets that have
not been delivered or retransmitted in time, and delivers the
subsequent packets to the application when it is their time to play.
In pseudo-code, the algorithm of reading from the receiver buffer is
the following:
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<CODE BEGINS>
pos = 0; /* Current receiver buffer position */
i = 0; /* Position of the next available in the receiver buffer
packet relatively to the current buffer position pos */
while(True) {
// Get the position i of the next available packet
// in the receiver buffer
i = next_avail();
// Calculate packet delivery time PktTsbpdTime
// for the next available packet
PktTsbpdTime = delivery_time(i);
if T_NOW < PktTsbpdTime:
continue;
Drop packets which buffer position number is less than i;
Deliver packet with the buffer position i;
pos = i + 1;
}
<CODE ENDS>
where T_NOW is the current time according to the receiver clock.
When a receiver encounters the situation where the next packet to be
played was not successfully received from the sender, the receiver
will "skip" this packet and send a fake ACK packet (Section 4.8.1).
To the sender, this fake ACK is a real ACK, and so it just behaves as
if the packet had been received. This facilitates the
synchronization between SRT sender and receiver. The fact that a
packet was skipped remains unknown by the sender. It is recommended
that skipped packets are recorded in the statistics on the SRT
receiver.
The TLPKTDROP mechanism can be turned off to always ensure a clean
delivery. However, a lost packet can simply pause a delivery for
some longer, potentially undefined time, and cause even worse tearing
for the player. Setting SRT latency higher will help much more in
the event that TLPKTDROP causes packet drops too often.
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4.7. Drift Management
When the sender enters "connected" status it tells the application
there is a socket interface that is transmitter-ready. At this point
the application can start sending data packets. It adds packets to
the SRT sender's buffer at a certain input rate, from which they are
transmitted to the receiver at scheduled times.
A synchronized time is required to keep proper sender/receiver buffer
levels, taking into account the time zone and round-trip time (up to
2 seconds for satellite links). Considering addition/subtraction
round-off, and possibly unsynchronized system times, an agreed-upon
time base drifts by a few microseconds every minute. The drift may
accumulate over many days to a point where the sender or receiver
buffers will overflow or deplete, seriously affecting the quality of
the video. SRT has a time management mechanism to compensate for
this drift.
When a packet is received, SRT determines the difference between the
time it was expected and its timestamp. The timestamp is calculated
on the receiver side. The RTT tells the receiver how much time it
was supposed to take. SRT maintains a reference between the time at
the leading edge of the send buffer's latency window and the
corresponding time on the receiver (the present time). This allows
to convert packet timestamp to the local receiver time. Based on
this time, various events (packet delivery, etc.) can be scheduled.
The receiver samples time drift data and periodically calculates a
packet timestamp correction factor, which is applied to each data
packet received by adjusting the inter-packet interval. When a
packet is received it is not given right away to the application. As
time advances, the receiver knows the expected time for any missing
or dropped packet, and can use this information to fill any "holes"
in the receive queue with another packet (see Section 4.5).
It is worth noting that the period of sampling time drift data is
based on a number of packets rather than time duration to ensure
enough samples, independently of the media stream packet rate. The
effect of network jitter on the estimated time drift is attenuated by
using a large number of samples. The actual time drift being very
slow (affecting a stream only after many hours) does not require a
fast reaction.
The receiver uses local time to be able to schedule events -- to
determine, for example, if it is time to deliver a certain packet
right away. The timestamps in the packets themselves are just
references to the beginning of the session. When a packet is
received (with a timestamp from the sender), the receiver makes a
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reference to the beginning of the session to recalculate its
timestamp. The start time is derived from the local time at the
moment that the session is connected. A packet timestamp equals
"now" minus "StartTime", where the latter is the point in time when
the socket was created.
4.8. Acknowledgement and Lost Packet Handling
To enable the Automatic Repeat reQuest of data packet
retransmissions, a sender stores all sent data packets in its buffer.
The SRT receiver periodically sends acknowledgments (ACKs) for the
received data packets so that the SRT sender can remove the
acknowledged packets from its buffer (Section 4.8.1). Once the
acknowledged packets are removed, their retransmission is no longer
possible and presumably not needed.
Upon receiving the full acknowledgment (ACK) control packet, the SRT
sender SHOULD acknowledge its reception to the receiver by sending an
ACKACK control packet with the sequence number of the full ACK packet
being acknowledged.
The SRT receiver also sends NAK control packets to notify the sender
about the missing packets (Section 4.8.2). The sending of a NAK
packet can be triggered immediately after a gap in sequence numbers
of data packets is detected. In addition, a Periodic NAK report
mechanism can be used to send NAK reports periodically. The NAK
packet in that case will list all the packets that the receiver
considers being lost up to the moment the Periodic NAK report is
sent.
Upon reception of the NAK packet, the SRT sender prioritizes
retransmissions of lost packets over the regular data packets to be
transmitted for the first time.
The retransmission of the missing packet is repeated until the
receiver acknowledges its receipt, or if both peers agree to drop
this packet (Section 4.6).
4.8.1. Packet Acknowledgement (ACKs, ACKACKs)
At certain intervals (see below), the SRT receiver sends an
acknowledgment (ACK) that causes the acknowledged packets to be
removed from the SRT sender's buffer.
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An ACK control packet contains the sequence number of the packet
immediately following the latest in the list of received packets.
Where no packet loss has occurred up to the packet with sequence
number n, an ACK would include the sequence number (n + 1).
An ACK (from a receiver) will trigger the transmission of an ACKACK
(by the sender), with almost no delay. The time it takes for an ACK
to be sent and an ACKACK to be received is the RTT. The ACKACK tells
the receiver to stop sending the ACK position because the sender
already knows it. Otherwise, ACKs (with outdated information) would
continue to be sent regularly. Similarly, if the sender does not
receive an ACK, it does not stop transmitting.
There are two conditions for sending an acknowledgment. A full ACK
is based on a timer of 10 milliseconds (the ACK period or
synchronization time interval SYN). For high bitrate transmissions,
a "light ACK" can be sent, which is an ACK for a sequence of packets.
In a 10 milliseconds interval, there are often so many packets being
sent and received that the ACK position on the sender does not
advance quickly enough. To mitigate this, after 64 packets (even if
the ACK period has not fully elapsed) the receiver sends a light ACK.
A light ACK is a shorter ACK (SRT header and one 32-bit field). It
does not trigger an ACKACK.
When a receiver encounters the situation where the next packet to be
played was not successfully received from the sender, it will "skip"
this packet (see Section 4.6) and send a fake ACK. To the sender,
this fake ACK is a real ACK, and so it just behaves as if the packet
had been received. This facilitates the synchronization between SRT
sender and receiver. The fact that a packet was skipped remains
unknown by the sender. Skipped packets are recorded in the
statistics on the SRT receiver.
4.8.2. Packet Retransmission (NAKs)
The SRT receiver sends NAK control packets to notify the sender about
the missing packets. The NAK packet sending can be triggered
immediately after a gap in sequence numbers of data packets is
detected.
Upon reception of the NAK packet, the SRT sender prioritizes
retransmissions of lost packets over the regular data packets to be
transmitted for the first time.
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The SRT sender maintains a list of lost packets (loss list) that is
built from NAK reports. When scheduling packet transmission, it
looks to see if a packet in the loss list has priority and sends it
if so. Otherwise, it sends the next packet scheduled for the first
transmission list. Note that when a packet is transmitted, it stays
in the buffer in case it is not received by the SRT receiver.
NAK packets are processed to fill in the loss list. As the latency
window advances and packets are dropped from the sending queue, a
check is performed to see if any of the dropped or resent packets are
in the loss list, to determine if they can be removed from there as
well so that they are not retransmitted unnecessarily.
There is a counter for the packets that are resent. If there is no
ACK for a packet, it will stay in the loss list and can be resent
more than once. Packets in the loss list are prioritized.
If packets in the loss list continue to block the send queue, at some
point this will cause the send queue to fill. When the send queue is
full, the sender will begin to drop packets without even sending them
the first time. An encoder (or other application) may continue to
provide packets, but there's no place for them, so they will end up
being thrown away.
This condition where packets are unsent does not happen often. There
is a maximum number of packets held in the send buffer based on the
configured latency. Older packets that have no chance to be
retransmitted and played in time are dropped, making room for newer
real-time packets produced by the sending application. See
Section 4.5, Section 4.6 for details.
In addition to the regular NAKs, the Periodic NAK report mechanism
can be used to send NAK reports periodically. The NAK packet in that
case will have all the packets that the receiver considers being lost
at the time of sending the Periodic NAK report.
SRT Periodic NAK reports are sent with a period of (RTT + 4 * RTTVar)
/ 2 (so called NAKInterval), with a 20 milliseconds floor, where RTT
and RTTVar are defined in Section 4.10. A NAK control packet
contains a compressed list of the lost packets. Therefore, only lost
packets are retransmitted. By using NAKInterval for the NAK reports
period, it may happen that lost packets are retransmitted more than
once, but it helps maintain low latency in the case where NAK packets
are lost.
An ACKACK tells the receiver to stop sending the ACK position because
the sender already knows it. Otherwise, ACKs (with outdated
information) would continue to be sent regularly.
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An ACK serves as a ping, with a corresponding ACKACK pong, to measure
RTT. The time it takes for an ACK to be sent and an ACKACK to be
received is the RTT. Each ACK has a number. A corresponding ACKACK
has that same number. The receiver keeps a list of all ACKs in a
queue to match them. Unlike a full ACK, which contains the current
RTT and several other values in the Control Information Field (CIF)
(Section 3.2.4), a light ACK just contains the sequence number. All
control messages are sent directly and processed upon reception, but
ACKACK processing time is negligible (the time this takes is included
in the round-trip time).
4.9. Bidirectional Transmission Queues
Once an SRT connection is established, both peers can send data
packets simultaneously.
4.10. Round-Trip Time Estimation
Round-trip time (RTT) in SRT is estimated during the transmission of
data packets based on a difference in time between an ACK packet is
sent out and a corresponding ACKACK packet is received back by the
SRT receiver.
An ACK sent by the receiver triggers an ACKACK from the sender with
minimal processing delay. The ACKACK response is expected to arrive
at the receiver roughly one RTT after the corresponding ACK was sent.
The SRT receiver records the time when an ACK is sent out. The ACK
carries a unique sequence number (independent of the data packet
sequence number). The corresponding ACKACK also carries the same
sequence number. Upon receiving the ACKACK, SRT calculates the RTT
by comparing the difference between the ACKACK arrival time and the
ACK departure time. In the following formula, RTT is the current
value that the receiver maintains and rtt is the recent value that
was just calculated from an ACK/ACKACK pair:
RTT = 7/8 * RTT + 1/8 * rtt
RTT variance (RTTVar) is obtained as follows:
RTTVar = 3/4 * RTTVar + 1/4 * abs(RTT - rtt)
where abs() means an absolute value.
Both RTT and RTTVar are measured in microseconds. The initial value
of RTT is 100 milliseconds, RTTVar is 50 milliseconds.
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The round-trip time (RTT) calculated by the receiver as well as the
RTT variance (RTTVar) are sent with the next full acknowledgement
packet (see Section 3.2.4). Note that the first ACK in an SRT
session might contain an initial RTT value of 100 milliseconds,
because the early calculations may not be precise.
The sender always gets the RTT from the receiver. It does not have
an analog to the ACK/ACKACK mechanism, i.e. it can not send a message
that guarantees an immediate return without processing. Upon an ACK
reception, the SRT sender updates its own RTT and RTTVar values using
the same formulas as above, in which case rtt is the most recent
value it receives, i.e., carried by an incoming ACK.
Note that an SRT socket can both send and receive data packets. RTT
and RTTVar are updated by the socket based on algorithms for the
sender (using ACK packets) and for the receiver (using ACK/ACKACK
pairs). When an SRT socket receives data, it updates its local RTT
and RTTVar, which can be used for its own sender as well.
5. SRT Packet Pacing and Congestion Control
SRT provides certain mechanisms for exchanging feedback on the state
of packet transmission between sender and receiver. Every 10
milliseconds the receiving side sends acknowledgement (ACK) packets
(Section 3.2.4) to the sender that include the latest values of RTT,
RTT variance, available buffer size, receiving rate, and estimated
link capacity. Similarly, NAK packets (Section 3.2.5) from the
receiver inform the sender of any packet loss during the
transmission, triggering an appropriate response. These mechanisms
provide a solid background for the integration of various congestion
control algorithms in the SRT protocol.
As SRT is designed both for live streaming and file transmission
(Section 4.2), there are two groups of congestion control algorithms
defined in SRT: Live Congestion Control (LiveCC), and File Transfer
Congestion Control (FileCC).
5.1. SRT Packet Pacing and Live Congestion Control (LiveCC)
To ensure smooth video playback on a receiving peer during live
streaming, SRT must control the sender's buffer level to prevent
overfill and depletion. The pacing control module is designed to
send packets as fast as they are submitted by a video application
while maintaining a relatively stable buffer level. While this looks
like a simple problem, the details of the Automatic Repeat Request
(ARQ) behaviour between input and output of the SRT sender add some
complexity.
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SRT needs a certain amount of bandwidth overhead in order to have
space for the sender to insert packets for retransmission with
minimum impact on the output rate of the main packet transmission.
This balance is achieved by adjusting the maximum allowed bandwidth
MAX_BW (Section 5.1.1) which limits the bandwidth usage by SRT. The
MAX_BW value is used by the Live Congestion Control (LiveCC) module
to calculate the minimum interval between consecutive sent packets
PKT_SND_PERIOD. In principle, the space between packets determines
where retransmissions can be inserted, and the overhead represents
the available margin. There is an empiric calculation that defines
the interval, in microseconds, between two packets to give a certain
bitrate. It is a function of the average packet payload (which
includes video, audio, etc.) and the configured maximum bandwidth
(MAX_BW). See Section 5.1.2 for details.
In the case of live streaming, the sender is allowed to drop packets
that cannot be delivered in time (Section 4.6).
The combination of pacing control and Live Congestion Control
(LiveCC), based on the input rate and an overhead for packets
retransmission, helps avoid congestion during fluctuations of the
source bitrate.
During live streaming over highly variable networks, fairness can be
achieved by controlling the bitrate of the source encoder at the
input of the SRT sender. SRT sender can provide a variety of network
related statistics, such as RTT estimate, packet loss level, the
number of packets dropped, etc., to the encoder which can be used for
making decisions and adjusting the bitrate in real time.
5.1.1. Configuring Maximum Bandwidth
There are several ways of configuring maximum bandwidth (MAX_BW):
1. MAXBW_SET mode: Set the value explicitly.
The recommended default value is 1 Gbps. The default value is
set only for live streaming.
Note that this static setting is not well-suited to a variable
input, like when you change the bitrate on an encoder. Each time
the input bitrate is configured on the encoder, MAX_BW should
also be reconfigured.
2. INPUTBW_SET mode: Set the SRT sender's input rate (INPUT_BW) and
overhead (OVERHEAD).
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In this mode, SRT calculates the maximum bandwidth as follows:
MAX_BW = INPUT_BW * (1 + OVERHEAD /100)
Note that INPUTBW_SET mode reduces to the MAXBW_SET mode and the
same restrictions apply.
3. INPUTBW_ESTIMATED mode: Measure the SRT sender's input rate
internally and set the overhead (OVERHEAD).
In this mode, SRT adjusts the value of maximum bandwidth each
time it gets the updated estimate of the input rate EST_INPUT_BW:
MAX_BW = EST_INPUT_BW * (1 + OVERHEAD /100)
Note that the units of MAX_BW, INPUT_BW, and EST_INPUT_BW are bytes
per second. OVERHEAD is defined in %.
INPUTBW_ESTIMATED mode is recommended for setting the maximum
bandwidth (MAX_BW) as it follows the fluctuations in SRT sender's
input rate. However, there are certain considerations that should be
taken into account.
In INPUTBW_SET mode, SRT takes as an input the rate that had been
configured as the expected output rate of an encoder (in terms of
bitrate for the packets including audio and overhead). But it is
normal for an encoder to occasionally overshoot. At low bitrate,
sometimes an encoder can be too optimistic and will output more bits
than expected. Under these conditions, SRT packets would not go out
fast enough because the configured bandwidth limitation would be too
low.
This is mitigated by calculating the bitrate internally
(INPUTBW_ESTIMATED mode). SRT examines the packets being submitted
and calculates the input rate as a moving average. However, this
introduces a bit of a delay based on the content. It also means that
if an encoder encounters black screens or still frames, this would
dramatically lower the bitrate being measured, which would in turn
reduce the SRT output rate. And then, when the video picks up again,
the input rate rises sharply. SRT would not start up again fast
enough on output because of the time it takes to measure the speed.
Packets might be accumulated in the SRT's sender buffer and delayed
as a result, causing them to arrive too late at the decoder, and
possible drops by the receiver.
The following table shows a summary of the bandwidth configuration
modes and the variables that need to be set (v) or ignored (-):
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| Mode / Variable | MAX_BW | INPUT_BW | OVERHEAD |
| --------------------- | ------ | -------- | -------- |
| MAXBW_SET | v | - | - |
| INPUTBW_SET | - | v | v |
| INPUTBW_ESTIMATED | - | - | v |
5.1.2. SRT's Default LiveCC Algorithm
The main goal of the SRT's default LiveCC algorithm is to adjust the
minimum allowed packet sending period PKT_SND_PERIOD (and, as a
result, the maximum allowed sending rate) during transmission based
on the average packet payload size (AvgPayloadSize) and maximum
bandwidth (MAX_BW).
On the sender side, there are three events that the LiveCC algorithm
reacts to: (1) sending a data packet, (2) receiving an
acknowledgement (ACK) packet, and (3) a timeout event as described
below.
(1) On sending a data packet (either original or retransmitted),
update the value of average packet payload size (AvgPayloadSize):
AvgPayloadSize = 7/8 * AvgPayloadSize + 1/8 * PacketPayloadSize
where PacketPayloadSize is the payload size of a sent data packet, in
bytes; the initial value of AvgPayloadSize is equal to the maximum
allowed packet payload size, which cannot be larger than 1456 bytes.
(2) On an acknowledgement (ACK) packet reception:
Step 1. Calculate SRT packet size (PktSize) as the sum of average
payload size (AvgPayloadSize) and SRT header size (Section 3), in
bytes.
Step 2. Calculate the minimum allowed packet sending period
(PKT_SND_PERIOD) as:
PKT_SND_PERIOD = PktSize * 1000000 / MAX_BW
where MAX_BW is the configured maximum bandwidth which limits the
bandwidth usage by SRT, in bytes per second; PKT_SND_PERIOD is
measured in microseconds.
(3) On a retransmission timeout (RTO) event, follow the same steps as
described in method (1) above.
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RTO is the amount of time within which an acknowledgement is expected
after a data packet is sent out. If there is no ACK after this
amount of time has elapsed, a timeout event is triggered. Since SRT
only acknowledges every SYN time (Section 4.8.1), the value of
retransmission timeout is defined as follows:
RTO = RTT + 4 * RTTVar + 2 * SYN
where RTT is the round-trip time estimate, in microseconds, and
RTTVar is the variance of RTT estimate, in microseconds, reported by
the receiver and smoothed at the sender side (see Section 3.2.4,
Section 4.10). Here and throughout the current section, smoothing
means applying an exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA).
Continuous timeout should increase the RTO value. In SRT, a counter
(RexmitCount) is used to track the number of continuous timeouts:
RTO = RexmitCount * (RTT + 4 * RTTVar + 2 * SYN) + SYN
On the receiver side, when a loss report is sent, the sending
interval of periodic NAK reports (Section 4.8.2) is updated as
follows:
NAKInterval = max((RTT + 4 * RTTVar) / 2, 20000)
where RTT and RTTVar are receiver's estimates (see Section 3.2.4,
Section 4.10). The minimum value of NAKInterval is set to 20
milliseconds in order to avoid sending periodic NAK reports too often
under low latency conditions.
5.2. File Transfer Congestion Control (FileCC)
For file transfer (Section 4.2), any known congestion control
algorithm like CUBIC [RFC8312] or BBR [BBR] can be applied, including
SRT's default FileCC algorithm described below.
5.2.1. SRT's Default FileCC Algorithm
SRT's default FileCC algorithm is a modified version of the UDT
native congestion control algorithm [GuAnAO], [GHG04b] designed for a
bulk data transfer over networks with a large bandwidth-delay product
(BDP). It is a hybrid Additive Increase Multiplicative Decrease
(AIMD) algorithm, hence it adjusts both congestion window size
(CWND_SIZE) and packet sending period (PKT_SND_PERIOD). The units of
measurement for CWND_SIZE and PKT_SND_PERIOD are packets and
microseconds, respectively.
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The algorithm controls sending rate by tuning the packet sending
period (i.e. how often packets are sent out). The sending rate is
increased upon receipt of an acknowledgement (ACK), and decreased
when receiving a loss report (negative acknowledgement, or NAK).
Only full ACKs, not light ACKs (Section 4.8.1), trigger an increase
in the sending rate.
SRT congestion control has two phases: "Slow Start" and "Congestion
Avoidance". In the slow start phase the congestion control module
probes the network to determine available bandwidth and the target
sending rate for the next (operational) phase, which is congestion
avoidance. In this phase, if there is no congestion detected via
loss reports, the sending rate is gradually increased. Conversely,
if a network congestion is detected, the algorithm decreases the
sending rate to reduce subsequent packet loss. The slow start phase
runs exactly once at the beginning of a connection, and stops when a
packet loss occurs, when the congestion window size reaches its
maximum value, or on a timeout event.
The detailed algorithm behaviour at both phases is described in
Section 5.2.1.1 and Section 5.2.1.2, respectively.
As with LiveCC, SRT's default FileCC algorithm reacts to three
events: (1) sending a data packet, (2) receiving an acknowledgement
(ACK) packet, and (3) a timeout event. These are described below as
they apply to the congestion control phases.
5.2.1.1. Slow Start
During the slow start phase, the packet sending period PKT_SND_PERIOD
is kept at 1 microsecond in order to send packets as fast as
possible, but not at an infinite rate. The initial value of the
congestion window size (CWND_SIZE) is set to 16 packets. CWND_SIZE
has an upper threshold, which is the maximum allowed congestion
window size (MAX_CWND_SIZE), so that even if there is no packet loss,
the slow start phase has to stop at a certain point. The threshold
can be set to the maximum receiver buffer size (12 MB).
(1) On an acknowledgement (ACK) packet reception:
Step 1. If the interval since the last time the sending rate was
either increased or kept (LastRCTime) is less than RC_INTERVAL:
a. Keep the sending rate at the same level;
b. Stop.
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<CODE BEGINS>
if (currTime - LastRCTime < RC_INTERVAL)
{
Keep the sending rate at the same level;
Stop;
}
<CODE ENDS>
where currTime is the current time, in microseconds; LastRCTime is
the last time the sending rate was either increased, or kept, in
microseconds.
Step 2. Update the value of LastRCTime to the current time:
LastRCTime = currTime
Step 3. The size of congestion window CWND_SIZE is increased by the
difference in sequence numbers of the data packet being acknowledged
ACK_SEQNO and the last acknowledged data packet LAST_ACK_SEQNO:
CWND_SIZE += ACK_SEQNO - LAST_ACK_SEQNO
Step 4. The sequence number of the last acknowledged data packet
LAST_ACK_SEQNO is updated as follows:
LAST_ACK_SEQNO = ACK_SEQNO
Step 5. If the congestion window size CWND_SIZE calculated at Step 3
is greater than the upper threshold MAX_CWND_SIZE, slow start phase
ends. Set the packet sending period PKT_SND_PERIOD as follows:
<CODE BEGINS>
if (RECEIVING_RATE > 0)
PKT_SND_PERIOD = 1000000 / RECEIVING_RATE;
else
PKT_SND_PERIOD = CWND_SIZE / (RTT + RC_INTERVAL);
<CODE ENDS>
where
* RECEIVING_RATE is the rate at which packets are being received, in
packets per second, reported by the receiver and smoothed at the
sender side (see Section 3.2.4, Section 5.2.1.3);
* RTT is the round-trip time estimate, in microseconds, reported by
the receiver and smoothed at the sender side (see Section 3.2.4,
Section 4.10);
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* RC_INTERVAL is the fixed rate control interval, in microseconds.
RC_INTERVAL of SRT is SYN, or synchronization time interval, which
is 0.01 second. An ACK in SRT is sent every fixed time interval.
The maximum and default ACK time interval is SYN. See
Section 4.8.1 for details.
(2) On a loss report (NAK) packet reception:
* Slow start phase ends;
* Set the packet sending period PKT_SND_PERIOD as described in Step
5 of section (1) above.
(3) On a retransmission timeout (RTO) event:
* Slow start phase ends;
* Set the packet sending period PKT_SND_PERIOD as described in Step
5 of section (1) above.
5.2.1.2. Congestion Avoidance
Once the slow start phase ends, the algorithm enters the congestion
avoidance phase and behaves as described below.
(1) On an acknowledgement (ACK) packet reception:
Step 1. If the interval since the last time the sending rate was
either increased or kept (LastRCTime) is less than RC_INTERVAL:
a. Keep the sending rate at the same level;
b. Stop.
<CODE BEGINS>
if (currTime - LastRCTime < RC_INTERVAL)
{
Keep the sending rate at the same level;
Stop;
}
<CODE ENDS>
where currTime is the current time, in microseconds; LastRCTime is
the last time the sending rate was either increased, or kept, in
microseconds.
Step 2. Update the value of LastRCTime to the current time:
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LastRCTime = currTime
Step 3. Set the congestion window size to:
CWND_SIZE = RECEIVING_RATE * (RTT + RC_INTERVAL) / 1000000 + 16
Step 4. If there is packet loss reported by the receiver
(bLoss=True):
a. Keep the value of PKT_SND_PERIOD at the same level;
b. Set the value of bLoss to False;
c. Stop.
bLoss flag is equal to True if a packet loss has happened since the
last sending rate increase. Initial value: False.
Step 5. If there is no packet loss reported by the receiver
(bLoss=False), calculate PKT_SND_PERIOD as follows:
<CODE BEGINS>
inc = 0;
lossBandwidth = 2 * (1000000 / LastDecPeriod);
linkCapacity = min(lossBandwidth, EST_LINK_CAPACITY);
B = linkCapacity - 1000000 / PKT_SND_PERIOD;
if ((PKT_SND_PERIOD > LastDecPeriod) && ((linkCapacity / 9) < B))
B = linkCapacity / 9;
if (B <= 0)
inc = 1 / S;
else
{
inc = pow(10.0, ceil(log10(B * S * 8))) * 0.0000015 / S;
inc = max(inc, 1 / S);
}
PKT_SND_PERIOD = (PKT_SND_PERIOD * RC_INTERVAL) /
(PKT_SND_PERIOD * inc + RC_INTERVAL);
<CODE ENDS>
where
* LastDecPeriod is the value of PKT_SND_PERIOD right before the last
sending rate decrease has happened (on a loss report (NAK) packet
reception), in microseconds. The initial value of LastDecPeriod
is set to 1 microsecond;
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* EST_LINK_CAPACITY is the estimated link capacity reported by the
receiver within an ACK packet and smoothed at the sender side
(Section 5.2.1.3), in packets per second;
* B is the estimated available bandwidth, in packets per second;
* S is the SRT packet size (in terms of IP payload) in bytes. SRT
treats 1500 bytes as a standard packet size.
A detailed explanation of the formulas used to calculate the increase
in sending rate can be found in [GuAnAO]. UDT's available bandwidth
estimation has been modified to take into account the bandwidth
registered at the moment of packet loss, since the estimated link
capacity reported by the receiver may overestimate the actual link
capacity significantly.
Step 6. If the value of maximum bandwidth MAX_BW defined in
Section 5.1 is set, limit the value of PKT_SND_PERIOD to the minimum
allowed period, if necessary:
<CODE BEGINS>
if (MAX_BW)
MIN_PERIOD = 1000000 / (MAX_BW / S);
if (PKT_SND_PERIOD < MIN_PERIOD)
PKT_SND_PERIOD = MIN_PERIOD;
<CODE ENDS>
Note that in the case of file transmission the the maximum allowed
bandwidth (MAX_BW) for SRT can be defined. This limits the minimum
possible interval between packets sent. Only the usage of MAXBW_SET
mode is possible (Section 5.1.1). In contrast with live streaming,
there is no default value set for MAX_BW, and the transmission rate
is not limited if not set explicitly.
(2) On a loss report (NAK) packet reception:
Step 1. Set the value of flag bLoss equal to True.
Step 2. If the current loss ratio estimated by the sender is less
than 2%:
a. Keep the sending rate at the same level;
b. Update the value of LastDecPeriod:
LastDecPeriod = PKT_SND_PERIOD
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c. Stop.
This modification has been introduced to increase the algorithm
tolerance to a random packet loss specific for public networks, but
not related to the absence of available bandwidth.
Step 3. If sequence number of a packet being reported as lost is
greater than the largest sequence number has been sent so far
(LastDecSeq), i.e. this NAK starts a new congestion period:
a. Set the value of LastDecPeriod to the current packet sending
period PKT_SND_PERIOD;
b. Increase the value of packet sending period:
PKT_SND_PERIOD = 1.03 * PKT_SND_PERIOD
c. Update AvgNAKNum:
AvgNAKNum = 0.97 * AvgNAKNum + 0.03 * NAKCount
d. Reset NAKCount and DecCount values to 1;
e. Record the current largest sent sequence number LastDecSeq;
f. Compute DecRandom to a random (uniform distribution) number
between 1 and AvgNAKNum. If DecRandom < 1: DecRandom = 1;
g. Stop;
where
* AvgNAKNum is the average number of NAKs during a congestion
period. Initial value: 0;
* NAKCount is the number of NAKs received so far in the current
congestion period. Initial value: 0;
* DecCount means the number of times that the sending rate has been
decreased during the congestion period. Initial value: 0;
* DecRandom is a random number used to decide if the rate should be
decreased or not for the following NAKs (not the first one) during
the congestion period. DecRandom is a random number between 1 and
the average number of NAKs per congestion period (AvgNAKNum).
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Congestion period is defined as the time between two NAKs in which
the biggest lost packet sequence number carried in the NAK is greater
than the LastDecSeq.
The coefficients used in the formulas above have been slightly
modified to reduce the amount by which the sending rate decreases.
Step 4. If DecCount <= 5, and NAKCount == DecCount * DecRandom:
a. Update SND period: SND = 1.03 * SND;
b. Increase DecCount and NAKCount by 1;
c. Record the current largest sent sequence number (LastDecSeq).
5.2.1.3. Link Capacity and Receiving Rate Estimation
Estimates of link capacity and receiving rate, in packets/bytes per
second, are calculated at the receiver side during file transmission
(Section 4.2). It is worth noting that the receiving rate estimate,
while available during the entire data transmission period, is used
only during the slow start phase of the congestion control algorithm
(Section 5.2.1.1). The latest estimate obtained before the end of
the slow start period is used by the sender as a reference maximum
speed to continue data transmission without further congestion. Link
capacity is estimated all the time and used primarily (as well as
packet loss ratio and other protocol statistics) for sending rate
adjustments during the transmission process.
As each data packet arrives, the receiver records the time delta with
respect to the arrival of the previous data packet, which is used to
estimate bandwidth and receiving speed (delivery rate). This and
other control information is communicated to the sender by means of
acknowledgment (ACK) packets sent every 10 milliseconds. At the
sender side, upon receiving a new value, an exponentially weighted
moving average (EWMA) is applied to update the latest estimate
maintained at the sender side.
It is important to note that for bandwidth estimation only data
probing packets are taken into account, while all data packets (both
data and data probing) are used for estimating receiving speed. Data
probing refers to the use of the packet pairs technique, whereby
pairs of probing packets are sent to a server back-to-back, thus
making it possible to measure the minimum interval in receiving
consecutive packets.
The detailed description of models used to estimate link capacity and
receiving rate can be found in [GuAnAO], [GHG04b].
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6. Encryption
This section describes the encryption mechanism that protects the
payload of SRT streams. Based on standard cryptographic algorithms,
the mechanism allows an efficient stream cipher with a key
establishment method.
6.1. Overview
SRT implements encryption using AES [AES] in counter mode (AES-CTR)
[SP800-38A] with a short-lived key to encrypt and decrypt the media
stream. The AES-CTR cipher is suitable for continuous stream
encryption that permits decryption from any point, without access to
start of the stream (random access), and for the same reason
tolerates packet loss. It also offers strong confidentiality when
the counter is managed properly.
6.1.1. Encryption Scope
SRT encrypts only the payload of SRT data packets (Section 3.1),
while the header is left unencrypted. The unencrypted header
contains the Packet Sequence Number field used to keep the
synchronization of the cipher counter between the encrypting sender
and the decrypting receiver. No constraints apply to the payload of
SRT data packets as no padding of the payload is required by counter
mode ciphers.
6.1.2. AES Counter
The counter for AES-CTR is the size of the cipher's block, i.e. 128
bits. It is derived from a 128-bit sequence consisting of
* a block counter in the least significant 16 bits which counts the
blocks in a packet;
* a packet index, based on the packet sequence number in the SRT
header, in the next 32 bits;
* eighty zeroed bits.
The upper 112 bits of this sequence are XORed with an Initialization
Vector (IV) to produce a unique counter for each crypto block. The
IV is derived from the Salt provided in the Keying Material
(Section 3.2.2):
IV = MSB(112, Salt): Most significant 112 bits of the salt.
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6.1.3. Stream Encrypting Key (SEK)
The key used for AES-CTR encryption is called the "Stream Encrypting
Key" (SEK). It is used for up to 2^25 packets with further rekeying.
The short-lived SEK is generated by the sender using a pseudo-random
number generator (PRNG), and transmitted within the stream, wrapped
with another longer-term key, the Key Encrypting Key (KEK), using a
known AES key wrap protocol.
For connection-oriented transport such as SRT, there is no need to
periodically transmit the short-lived key since no additional party
can join a stream in progress. The keying material is transmitted
within the connection handshake packets, and for a short period when
rekeying occurs.
6.1.4. Key Encrypting Key (KEK)
The Key Encrypting Key (KEK) is derived from a secret (passphrase)
shared between the sender and the receiver. The KEK provides access
to the Stream Encrypting Key, which in turn provides access to the
protected payload of SRT data packets. The KEK has to be at least as
long as the SEK.
The KEK is generated by a password-based key generation function
(PBKDF2) [RFC8018], using the passphrase, a number of iterations
(2048), a keyed-hash (HMAC-SHA1) [RFC2104], and a key length value
(KLen). The PBKDF2 function hashes the passphrase to make a long
string, by repetition or padding. The number of iterations is based
on how much time can be given to the process without it becoming
disruptive.
6.1.5. Key Material Exchange
The KEK is used to generate a wrap [RFC3394] that is put in a key
material (KM) message by the initiator of a connection (i.e. caller
in caller-listener handshake and initiator in the rendezvous
handshake, see Section 4.3) to send to the responder (listener). The
KM message contains the key length, the salt (one of the arguments
provided to the PBKDF2 function), the protocol being used (e.g. AES-
256) and the AES counter (which will eventually change, see
Section 6.1.6).
On the other side, the responder attempts to decode the wrap to
obtain the Stream Encrypting Key. In the protocol for the wrap there
is a padding, which is a known template, so the responder knows from
the KM that it has the right KEK to decode the SEK. The SEK
(generated and transmitted by the initiator) is random, and cannot be
known in advance. The KEK formula is calculated on both sides, with
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the difference that the responder gets the key length (KLen) from the
initiator via the key material (KM). It is the initiator who decides
on the configured length. The responder obtains it from the material
sent by the initiator.
The responder returns the same KM message to show that it has the
same information as the initiator, and that the encoded material will
be decrypted. If the responder does not return this status, this
means that it does not have the SEK. All incoming encrypted packets
received by the responder will be lost (undecrypted). Even if they
are transmitted successfully, the receiver will be unable to decrypt
them, and so packets will be dropped. All data packets coming from
responder will be unencrypted.
6.1.6. KM Refresh
The short lived SEK is regenerated for cryptographic reasons when a
pre-determined number of packets has been encrypted. The KM refresh
period is determined by the implementation. The receiver knows which
SEK (odd or even) was used to encrypt the packet by means of the KK
field of the SRT Data Packet (Section 3.1).
There are two variables used to determine the KM Refresh timing:
* KM Refresh Period specifies the number of packets to be sent
before switching to the new SEK.
* KM Pre-Announcement Period specifies when a new key is announced
in a number of packets before key switchover. The same value is
used to determine when to decommission the old key after
switchover.
The recommended KM Refresh Period is after 2^25 packets encrypted
with the same SEK are sent. The recommended KM Pre-Announcement
Period is 4000 packets (i.e. a new key is generated, wrapped, and
sent at 2^25 minus 4000 packets; the old key is decommissioned at
2^25 plus 4000 packets).
Even and odd keys are alternated during transmission the following
way. The packets with the earlier key #1 (let it be the odd key)
will continue to be sent. The receiver will receive the new key #2
(even), then decrypt and unwrap it. The receiver will reply to the
sender if it is able to understand. Once the sender gets to the
2^25th packet using the odd key (key #1), it will then start to send
packets with the even key (key #2), knowing that the receiver has
what it needs to decrypt them. This happens transparently, from one
packet to the next. At 2^25 plus 4000 packets the first key will be
decommissioned automatically.
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Both keys live in parallel for two times the Pre-Announcement Period
(e.g. 4000 packets before the key switch, and 4000 packets after).
This is to allow for packet retransmission. It is possible for
packets with the older key to arrive at the receiver a bit late.
Each packet contains a description of which key it requires, so the
receiver will still have the ability to decrypt it.
6.2. Encryption Process
6.2.1. Generating the Stream Encrypting Key
On the sending side SEK, Salt and KEK are generated in the following
way:
SEK = PRNG(KLen)
Salt = PRNG(128)
KEK = PBKDF2(passphrase, LSB(64,Salt), Iter, KLen)
where
* PBKDF2 is the PKCS#5 Password Based Key Derivation Function
[RFC8018];
* passphrase is the pre-shared passphrase;
* Salt is a field of the KM message;
* LSB(n, v) is the function taking n least significant bits of v;
* Iter=2048 defines the number of iterations for PBKDF2;
* KLen is a field of the KM message.
Wrap = AESkw(KEK, SEK)
where AESkw(KEK, SEK) is the key wrapping function [RFC3394].
6.2.2. Encrypting the Payload
The encryption of the payload of the SRT data packet is done with
AES-CTR
EncryptedPayload = AES_CTR_Encrypt(SEK, IV, UnencryptedPayload)
where the Initialization Vector (IV) is derived as
IV = (MSB(112, Salt) << 2) XOR (PktSeqNo)
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PktSeqNo is the value of the Packet Sequence Number field of the SRT
data packet.
6.3. Decryption Process
6.3.1. Restoring the Stream Encrypting Key
For the receiver to be able to decrypt the incoming stream it has to
know the stream encrypting key (SEK) used by the sender. The
receiver MUST know the passphrase used by the sender. The remaining
information can be extracted from the Keying Material message.
The Keying Material message contains the AES-wrapped [RFC3394] SEK
used by the encoder. The Key-Encryption Key (KEK) required to unwrap
the SEK is calculated as:
KEK = PBKDF2(passphrase, LSB(64,Salt), Iter, KLen)
where
* PBKDF2 is the PKCS#5 Password Based Key Derivation Function
[RFC8018];
* passphrase is the pre-shared passphrase;
* Salt is a field of the KM message;
* LSB(n, v) is the function taking n least significant bits of v;
* Iter=2048 defines the number of iterations for PBKDF2;
* KLen is a field of the KM message.
SEK = AESkuw(KEK, Wrap)
where AESkuw(KEK, Wrap) is the key unwrapping function.
6.3.2. Decrypting the Payload
The decryption of the payload of the SRT data packet is done with
AES-CTR
DecryptedPayload = AES_CTR_Encrypt(SEK, IV, EncryptedPayload)
where the Initialization Vector (IV) is derived as
IV = (MSB(112, Salt) << 2) XOR (PktSeqNo)
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PktSeqNo is the value of the Packet Sequence Number field of the SRT
data packet.
7. Best Practices and Configuration Tips for Data Transmission via SRT
7.1. Live Streaming
This section describes real world examples of live audio/video
streaming and the current consensus on maintaining the compatibility
between SRT implementations by different vendors. It is meant as
guidance for developers to write applications compatible with
existing SRT implementations.
The term "live streaming" refers to MPEG-TS style continuous data
transmission with latency management. Live streaming based on
segmentation and transmission of files like in HLS protocol [RFC8216]
is not part of this use case.
The default SRT data transmission mode for continuous live streaming
is message mode (Section 4.2.1) with certain settings applied as
described below:
* Only data packets with their Packet Position Flag (PP) field set
to "11b" are allowed, meaning a single data packet forms exactly
one message (Section 3.1).
* Timestamp-Based Packet Delivery (TSBPD) (Section 4.5) and Too-Late
Packet Drop (TLPKTDROP) (Section 4.6) mechanisms must be enabled.
* Live Congestion Control (LiveCC) (Section 5.1) must be used.
* Periodic NAK reports (Section 4.8.2) must be enabled.
* The Order Flag (Section 3.1) needs special attention. In the case
of live streaming, it is set to 0 allowing out of order delivery
of a packet. However, in this use case the Order Flag has to be
ignored by the receiver. As TSBPD is enabled, the receiver will
still deliver packets in order, but based on the timestamps. In
the case of a packet arriving too late and skipped by the
TLPKTDROP mechanism, the order of delivery is still maintained
except for potential sequence discontinuity.
This method has grown historically and is the current common
standard for live streaming across different SRT implementations.
A change or variation of the settings will break compatibility
between two parties.
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This combination of settings allows live streaming with a constant
latency (Section 4.4). The receiving end will not "fall behind" in
time by waiting for missing packets. However, data integrity might
not be ensured if packets or retransmitted packets do not arrive
within the expected time frame. Audio or video interruption can
occur, but the overall latency is maintained and does not increase
over time whenever packets are missing.
7.2. File Transmission
This section describes the use case of file transmission and provides
configuration examples.
The usage of both message and buffer modes (Section 4.2) is possible
in this case. For both modes, Timestamp-Based Packet Delivery
(TSBPD) (Section 4.5) and Too-Late Packet Drop (TLPKTDROP)
(Section 4.6) mechanisms must be turned off, while File Transfer
Congestion Control (FileCC) (Section 5.2) must be enabled.
When TSBPD is disabled, each packet gets timestamped with the time it
is sent by the SRT sender. A packet being sent for the first time
will have a timestamp different from that of a corresponding
retransmitted packet. In contrast to the live streaming case, the
timing of packets' delivery, when sending files, is not critical.
The most important thing is data integrity. Therefore the TLPKTDROP
mechanism must be disabled in this case. No data is allowed to be
dropped, because this will result in corrupted files with missing
data. The retransmission of missing packets has to happen until the
packets are finally acknowledged by the SRT receiver.
The File Transfer Congestion Control (FileCC) mechanism will take
care of using the available link bandwidth for maximum transfer
speed.
7.2.1. File Transmission in Buffer Mode
The original UDT protocol [GHG04b] used buffer mode (Section 4.2.2)
to send files, and the same is possible in SRT. This mode was
designed to transmit one file per connection. For a single file
transmission, a socket is opened, a file is transmitted, and then the
socket is closed. This procedure is repeated for each subsequent
single file, as the receiver cannot distinguish between two files in
a continuous data stream.
Buffer mode is not suitable for the transmission of many small files
since for every file a new connection has to be established. To
initiate a new connection, at least two round-trip times (RTTs) for
the handshake exchange are required (Section 4.3).
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It is also important to note that the SRT protocol does not add any
information to the data being transmitted. The file name or any
auxiliary information can be declared separately by the sending
application, e.g., in the form of a Stream ID Extension Message
(Section 3.2.1.3).
7.2.2. File Transmission in Message Mode
If message mode (Section 4.2.1) is used for the file transmission,
the application should either segment the file into several messages,
or use one message per file. The size of an individual message plays
an important role on the receiving side since the size of the
receiver buffer should be large enough to store at least a single
message entirely.
In the case of file transfer in message mode, the file name,
segmentation rules, or any auxiliary information can be specified
separately by both sending and receiving applications. The SRT
protocol does not provide a specific way of doing this. It could be
done by setting the file name, etc., in the very first message of a
message sequence, followed by the file itself.
When designing an application for SRT file transfer, it is also
important to be aware of the delivery order of the received messages.
This can be set by the Order Flag as described in Section 3.1.
8. Security Considerations
SRT provides confidentiality of the payload using stream cipher and a
pre-shared private key as specified in Section 6. The security can
be compromised if the pre-shared passphrase is known to the attacker.
On the protocol control level, SRT does not encrypt packet headers.
Therefore it has some vulnerabilities similar to TCP [RFC6528]:
* A peer tells a counterpart its public IP during the handshake that
is visible to any attacker.
* An attacker may potentially count the number of SRT processes
behind a Network Address Translator (NAT) by establishing multiple
SRT connections and tracking the ranges of SRT Socket IDs. If a
random Socket ID is generated for the first connection, subsequent
connections may get consecutive SRT Socket IDs. Assuming one
system runs only one SRT process, for example, then an attacker
can estimate the number of systems behind a NAT.
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* Similarly, the possibility of attack depends on the implementation
of the initial sequence number (ISN) generation. If an ISN is not
generated randomly for each connection, an attacker may
potentially count the number of systems behind a Network Address
Translator (NAT) by establishing a number of SRT connections and
identifying the number of different sequence number "spaces",
given that no SRT packet headers are encrypted.
* An eavesdropper can hijack existing connections only if it steals
the IP and port of one of the parties. If some stream addresses
an existing SRT receiver by its SRT socket ID, IP, and port
number, but arrives from a different IP or port, the SRT receiver
ignores it.
* SRT has a certain protection from DoS attacks, see Section 4.3.
There are some important considerations regarding the encryption
feature of SRT:
* The SEK must be changed at an appropriate refresh interval to
avoid the risk associated with the use of security keys over a
long period of time.
* The shared secret for KEK generation must be carefully configured
by a security officer responsible for security policies, enforcing
encryption, and limiting key size selection.
9. IANA Considerations
This document makes no requests of the IANA.
Contributors
This specification is based on the SRT Protocol Technical Overview
[SRTTO] written by Jean Dube and Steve Matthews.
In alphabetical order, the contributors to the pre-IETF SRT project
and specification at Haivision are: Marc Cymontkowski, Roman
Diouskine, Jean Dube, Mikolaj Malecki, Steve Matthews, Maria
Sharabayko, Maxim Sharabayko, Adam Yellen.
The contributors to this specification at SK Telecom are Jeongseok
Kim and Joonwoong Kim.
It is worth acknowledging also the contribution of the following
people in this document: Justus Rogmann.
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We cannot list all the contributors to the open-sourced
implementation of SRT on GitHub. But we appreciate the help,
contribution, integrations and feedback of the SRT and SRT Alliance
community.
Acknowledgments
The basis of the SRT protocol and its implementation was the UDP-
based Data Transfer Protocol [GHG04b]. The authors thank Yunhong Gu
and Robert Grossman, the authors of the UDP-based Data Transfer
Protocol [GHG04b].
TODO acknowledge.
References
Normative References
[GHG04b] Gu, Y., Hong, X., and R.L. Grossman, "Experiences in
Design and Implementation of a High Performance Transport
Protocol", DOI 10.1109/SC.2004.24, December 2004,
<https://doi.org/10.1109/SC.2004.24>.
[RFC0768] Postel, J., "User Datagram Protocol", STD 6, RFC 768,
DOI 10.17487/RFC0768, August 1980,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc768>.
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.
Informative References
[AES] National Institute of Standards and Technology, "FIPS Pub
197: Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)", November 2001,
<http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/fips/fips197/fips-
197.pdf>.
[AV1] Rivaz, P.d. and J. Haughton, "AV1 Bitstream & Decoding
Process Specification", September 2021,
<https://aomediacodec.github.io/av1-spec/av1-spec.pdf>.
[BBR] Cardwell, N., Cheng, Y., Gunn, C.S., Yeganeh, S.H., and V.
Jacobson, "BBR: Congestion-Based Congestion Control", ACM
Queue, vol. 14 , October 2016.
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[GuAnAO] Gu, Y., Hong, X., and R.L. Grossman, "An Analysis of AIMD
Algorithm with Decreasing Increases", Proceedings of the
1st International Workshop on Networks for Grid
Applications (GridNets '04) , October 2004.
[H.265] International Telecommunications Union, "H.265 : High
efficiency video coding", ITU-T Recommendation H.265,
2019.
[I-D.ietf-quic-http]
Bishop, M., "Hypertext Transfer Protocol Version 3
(HTTP/3)", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-
quic-http-34, 2 February 2021,
<https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-ietf-quic-http-
34.txt>.
[ISO13818-1]
ISO, "Information technology - Generic coding of moving
pictures and associated audio information: Systems", ISO/
IEC 13818-1, September 2021.
[ISO23009] ISO, "Information technology - Dynamic adaptive streaming
over HTTP (DASH)", ISO/IEC 23009:2019, September 2021.
[PNPID] "PNP ID AND ACPI ID REGISTRY", September 2021,
<https://uefi.org/PNP_ACPI_Registry>.
[RFC2104] Krawczyk, H., Bellare, M., and R. Canetti, "HMAC: Keyed-
Hashing for Message Authentication", RFC 2104,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2104, February 1997,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2104>.
[RFC3031] Rosen, E., Viswanathan, A., and R. Callon, "Multiprotocol
Label Switching Architecture", RFC 3031,
DOI 10.17487/RFC3031, January 2001,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3031>.
[RFC3394] Schaad, J. and R. Housley, "Advanced Encryption Standard
(AES) Key Wrap Algorithm", RFC 3394, DOI 10.17487/RFC3394,
September 2002, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3394>.
[RFC4987] Eddy, W., "TCP SYN Flooding Attacks and Common
Mitigations", RFC 4987, DOI 10.17487/RFC4987, August 2007,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4987>.
[RFC6528] Gont, F. and S. Bellovin, "Defending against Sequence
Number Attacks", RFC 6528, DOI 10.17487/RFC6528, February
2012, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6528>.
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[RFC8018] Moriarty, K., Ed., Kaliski, B., and A. Rusch, "PKCS #5:
Password-Based Cryptography Specification Version 2.1",
RFC 8018, DOI 10.17487/RFC8018, January 2017,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8018>.
[RFC8174] Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8174>.
[RFC8216] Pantos, R., Ed. and W. May, "HTTP Live Streaming",
RFC 8216, DOI 10.17487/RFC8216, August 2017,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8216>.
[RFC8312] Rhee, I., Xu, L., Ha, S., Zimmermann, A., Eggert, L., and
R. Scheffenegger, "CUBIC for Fast Long-Distance Networks",
RFC 8312, DOI 10.17487/RFC8312, February 2018,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8312>.
[RFC9000] Iyengar, J., Ed. and M. Thomson, Ed., "QUIC: A UDP-Based
Multiplexed and Secure Transport", RFC 9000,
DOI 10.17487/RFC9000, May 2021,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9000>.
[RTMP] "Real-Time Messaging Protocol", September 2021,
<https://www.adobe.com/devnet/rtmp.html>.
[SP800-38A]
Dworkin, M., "Recommendation for Block Cipher Modes of
Operation", December 2001.
[SRTSRC] "SRT fully functional reference implementation", September
2021, <https://github.com/Haivision/srt>.
[SRTTO] Dube, J. and S. Matthews, "SRT Protocol Technical
Overview", December 2019.
[VP9] WebM, "VP9 Video Codec", September 2021,
<https://www.webmproject.org/vp9>.
Appendix A. Packet Sequence List Coding
For any single packet sequence number, it uses the original sequence
number in the field. The first bit MUST start with "0".
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0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
|0| Sequence Number |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 21: Single sequence numbers coding
For any consecutive packet sequence numbers that the difference
between the last and first is more than 1, only record the first (a)
and the the last (b) sequence numbers in the list field, and modify
the the first bit of a to "1".
0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
|1| Sequence Number a (first) |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
|0| Sequence Number b (last) |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 22: Range of sequence numbers coding
Appendix B. SRT Access Control
One type of information that can be interchanged when a connection is
being established in SRT is the Stream ID, which can be used in a
caller-listener connection layout. This is a string of maximum 512
characters set on the caller side. It can be retrieved at the
listener side on the newly accepted connection.
SRT listener can notify an upstream application about the connection
attempt when a HS conclusion arrives, exposing the contents of the
Stream ID extension message. Based on this information, the
application can accept or reject the connection, select the desired
data stream, or set an appropriate passphrase for the connection.
The Stream ID value can be used as free-form, but there is a
recommended convention so that all SRT users speak the same language.
The intent of the convention is to:
* promote readability and consistency among free-form names,
* interpret some typical data in the key-value style.
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B.1. General Syntax
This recommended syntax starts with the characters known as an
executable specification in POSIX: "#!".
The next character defines the format used for the following key-
value pair syntax. At the moment, there is only one supported syntax
identified by ":" and described below.
Everything that comes after a syntax identifier is further referenced
as the content of the Stream ID.
The content starts with a ":" or "{" character identifying its
format:
<spanx style="verb">:</spanx> comma-separated key-value pairs with
no nesting,
<spanx style="verb">{</spanx> a nested block with one or several
key-value pairs that must end with a "}" character. Nesting means
that multiple level brace-enclosed parts are allowed.
The form of the key-value pair is
key1=value1,key2=value2,...
B.2. Standard Keys
Beside the general syntax, there are several top-level keys treated
as standard keys. All single letter key definitions, including those
not listed in this section, are reserved for future use. Users can
additionally use custom key definitions with user_* or companyname_*
prefixes, where user and companyname are to be replaced with an
actual user or company name.
The existing key values MUST NOT be extended, and MUST NOT differ
from those described in this section.
The following keys are standard:
* u: User Name, or authorization name, that is expected to control
which password should be used for the connection. The application
should interpret it to distinguish which user should be used by
the listener party to set up the password.
* r: Resource Name identifies the name of the resource and
facilitates selection should the listener party be able to serve
multiple resources.
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* h: Host Name identifies the hostname of the resource. For
example, to request a stream with the URI somehost.com/videos/
querry.php?vid=366 the hostname field should have somehost.com,
and the resource name can have videos/querry.php?vid=366 or simply
366. Note that this is still a key to be specified explicitly.
Support tools that apply simplifications and URI extraction are
expected to insert only the host portion of the URI here.
* s: Session ID is a temporary resource identifier negotiated with
the server, used just for verification. This is a one-shot
identifier, invalidated after the first use. The expected usage
is when details for the resource and authorization are negotiated
over a separate connection first, and then the session ID is used
here alone.
* t: Type specifies the purpose of the connection. Several standard
types are defined:
- stream (default, if not specified): for exchanging the user-
specified payload for an application-defined purpose,
- file: for transmitting a file where r is the filename,
- auth: for exchanging sensible data. The r value states its
purpose. No specific possible values for that are known so far
(for future use).
* m: Mode expected for this connection:
- request (default): the caller wants to receive the stream data,
- publish: the caller wants to send the stream data,
- bidirectional: bidirectional data exchange is expected.
Note that "m" is not required in the case where Stream ID is not used
to distinguish authorization or resources, and the caller is expected
to send the data. This is only for cases where the listener can
handle various purposes of the connection and is therefore required
to know what the caller is attempting to do.
B.3. Examples
The example content of the Stream ID is the following:
#!::u=admin,r=bluesbrothers1_hi
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It specifies the username and the resource name of the stream to be
served to the caller.
The next example specifies that the file is expected to be
transmitted from the caller to the listener and its name is
results.csv:
#!::u=johnny,t=file,m=publish,r=results.csv
Appendix C. Changelog
C.1. Since draft-sharabayko-mops-srt-00
* Improved and extended the description of "Encryption" section.
* Improved and extended the description of "Round-Trip Time
Estimation" section.
* Extended the description of "Handshake" section with "Stream ID
Extension Message", "Group Membership Extension" subsections.
* Extended "Handshake Messages" section with the detailed
description of handshake procedure.
* Improved "Key Material" section description.
* Changed packet structure formatting for "Packet Structure"
section.
* Did minor additions to the "Acknowledgement and Lost Packet
Handling" section.
* Fixed broken links.
* Extended the list of references.
C.2. Since draft-sharabayko-mops-srt-01
* Extended "Congestion Control" section with the detailed
description of SRT packet pacing for both live streaming and file
transmission cases.
* Improved "Group Membership Extension" section.
* Reworked "Security Consideration" section.
* Added missing control packets: Drop Request, Peer Error,
Congestion Warning.
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* Improved "Data Transmission Modes" section as well as added "Best
Practices and Configuration Tips for Data Transmission via SRT"
section describing the use cases of live streaming and file
transmission via SRT.
* Changed the workgroup from "MOPS" to "Network Working Group".
* Changed the intended status of the document from "Standards Track"
to "Informational".
* Overall corrections throughout the document: fixed lists,
punctuation, etc.
C.3. Since draft-sharabayko-srt-00
* Message Drop Request control packet: added note about possible
zero-valued message number.
* Corrected an error in the formula for NAKInterval: changed min to
max.
* Added a note in "Best Practices and Configuration Tips for Data
Transmission via SRT" section that Periodic NAK reports must be
enabled in the case of live streaming.
* Introduced the value of TLPKTDROP_THRESHOLD for Too-Late Packet
Drop mechanism.
* Improved the description of general syntax for SRT Access Control.
* Updated the list of contributors.
* Overall corrections throughout the document.
Authors' Addresses
Maxim Sharabayko
Haivision Network Video, GmbH
Email: maxsharabayko@haivision.com
Maria Sharabayko
Haivision Network Video, GmbH
Email: msharabayko@haivision.com
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Jean Dube
Haivision Systems, Inc.
Email: jdube@haivision.com
Jeongseok Kim
SK Telecom Co., Ltd.
Email: jeongseok.kim@sk.com
Joonwoong Kim
SK Telecom Co., Ltd.
Email: joonwoong.kim@sk.com
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