Aside from RTMP, another popular video streaming protocol is SRT, which stands for Secure Reliable Transport. It was created by Canadian company Haivision and is currently available for all developers to use due to its open-source nature. This is making SRT become the de facto standard used by the audio and video industries.

So, what’s so special about SRT? The protocol is also a technology stack that optimizes video streaming performance across unpredictable networks. It basically allows end-to-end ultra-low latency and great image quality when used on unmannered and unpredictable networks.

The protocol’s secret is an intelligent packet retransmit mechanism called ARQ (Automatic Repeat reQuest) on top of a UDP data flow, along with AES-128 and 256-bit encryption. Since it became open source in 2017, SRT has seen rapid growth in its adoption and support.

SRT’s technical qualities make it a great alternative to RTMP. Some studies suggest that SRT is twice as fast when used between great distances to reach a target destination. RTMP is still reliable when using maximum bandwidth, but allegedly, SRT performs better with long-distance streams –for example, when streaming video across continents.