Blog: Working Towards Protocol Harmony in the Broadcast Industry

03/08/2022

In the first of a series of industry think pieces, we at Sencore want to start by digging into the concept of Internet Protocols. Why are there so many, what do they achieve, and what's stopping us from moving towards one harmonized standard across the industry?

Of all the sci-fi dreams that have been realized in the past century from space travel to self-driving cars to lifelike robots the one thing we still seem to be far from achieving is that of harmonized standards. Visions of the future never dwelled on the idea as particularly spectacular they just assumed everything would work together. After all, why wouldn't it? Think of the Enterprise and its ability to communicate via video chat with a Klingon warship, thousands of miles across space, with no message saying, codec not supported' and no jitter or signal loss (unless it happened to be prudent to the plot).

The concept of interoperability remains one of our biggest hurdles in the broadcast industry. The propagation of different standards and approaches to various networking tasks continues to grow, with no sign of convergence in sight.

But is harmonization what we need? Or is there good reason to maintain variation in the range of network protocols that we retain as an industry? We think that's a question worthy of further exploration

The great IP debate

The issue of how to do things' (i.e. what methods, protocols, standards and workflows to deploy) begins right at the top, with the question of IP. There are arguments to say that the adoption of IP isn't so much a debate as it is inevitable. But, in essence, the first of our interoperability wars starts not at the nitty-gritty level, but right at the top: RF, DTT, Satellite, Cable, IPTV, OTT: just how should the industry be getting content to their audiences? Even at the production level, there's the raging SDI/IP debate.

At Sencore we'd argue the writing is on the wall: IP is the inevitable future in both production and distribution spaces. Those that haven't made the transition yet are held back by one of two things: fear or finances. One of our missions at Sencore is to make sure that neither need be an obstacle providing knowledge and guidance along with solutions designed to reduce overall OpEx.

The network as a wedding cake

It's not a perfect metaphor, but what we're trying to portray, is the idea that networks operate on four layers: application, transport, network, and link (or under ISO's definition, seven layers: physical, data link, network, transport, session, presentation, and application).

It is of course the transport layer where the first major protocol battle occurs; normally waged between UDP (User Datagram Protocol) and TCP (Transmission Control Protocol). It is upon these that streaming protocols rest. The central difference is the need for a handshake', in which TCP has the client both ask for and acknowledge the server's response. The net result is that TCP has high levels of reliability in terms of packet ordering, whilst UDP can achieve things much more quickly, and without reference to bandwidth limitations, but has significant possibility for a real mess to arrive at the other end. The difference in outcome is illustrated by the two jokes we've added below. (We'd like to tell you another UDP joke, but you might not get it, and we don't really care ).

Crossing the Stream

With the basis of UDP and TCP established, it's time to get down to the real challenge: choosing a streaming protocol. These can be effectively divided into two, the traditional' and the HTTP adaptive' (plus a couple of new emerging standards).

In the traditional camp, there's RTMP (Real-Time Messaging Protocol) and RTP (Real-Time Streaming Protocol). These protocols support low latency streaming, but they rarely have much native support in the browsers and cell phones that constitute their final destination. RTMP used to see broad support with Flash' video player, but that left our collective browsers in 2020. However, RTMP still plays a significant role in contribution. RTP however remains the dominate player here, with MPEG TS over IP and Forward Error Correction (ST 2022-1 & ST 2022-2) providing an important step in correcting the shortcomings of the underlying UDP tendency of throwing packets at the wall and hoping they stick

Then we've got the range of HTTP adaptive protocols. These include MPEG-DASH, Apple's HLS, amongst others. These use adaptive bitrate streaming and work to maximise the viewer experience within the constraints of what's available; (largely) regardless of connection, bandwidth or the software or device being used.

Lots of these standards do impressive things and are great for covering the last mile'. But you'll notice one common factor amongst them: the presence of some big brand names. And that brings with it its own set of problems

There is more than one way to bake a cake

So why are there so many competing ways of doing things? Well, the reasons are complex and multifaceted, but two key themes generally emerge, one of which is a slightly more charitable interpretation than the other.

The charitable: One could surmise from the above discussion of various protocols and standards, that they all carry different strengths and weaknesses and are each suited for different tasks. The deployment of different protocols and different standards grants more flexibility in regulating the traditional quality/speed/reliability triangle and matching it to the needs of the data and audience in question.

The uncharitable: Profit! For some time, the industry had an idea that if proprietary mechanisms of data processing/movement/interaction could be developed, then that constituted a nifty way of locking customers into their products for

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