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AXIS 210/211 - Video Streams
MPEG-4 protocols and communication methods
To deliver live streaming video over IP networks, various combinations of transport
protocols and broadcast methods are employed.
• RTP (Realtime Transport Protocol) is a protocol that allows programs to manage the
real-time transmission of multimedia data, via unicast or multicast.
• RTSP (Real Time Streaming Protocol) serves as a control protocol, to negotiate which
transport protocol to use for the stream. RTSP is thus used by a viewing client to start a
unicast session, see below.
• UDP (User Datagram Protocol) is a communications protocol that offers limited service
for exchanging data in a network that uses the Internet Protocol (IP). UDP is an alterna-
tive to the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP). The advantage of UDP is that it is not
required to deliver all data and may drop network packets when there is e.g. network
congestion. This is suitable for live video, as there is no point in re-transmitting old
information that will not be displayed anyway.
• Unicasting is communication between a single sender and a single receiver over a net-
work. This means that the video stream goes independently to each user, and each user
gets their own stream. A benefit of unicasting is that if one stream fails, it only affects
one user.
• Multicast is bandwidth-conserving technology that reduces bandwidth usage by simul-
taneously delivering a single stream of information to multiple network recipients. This
technology is used primarily on delimited networks (intranets), as each user needs an
uninterrupted data flow and should not rely on network routers.
How to stream MPEG-4?
Deciding on the combination of protocols and methods to use depends on your viewing
requirements, and on the properties of your network.
RTP+RTSP
This method (actually RTP over UDP and RTSP over TCP) should be your first consideration
for live video, especially when it is important to always have an up-to-date video stream,
even if some images do get dropped. This can be configured as multicast or unicast.
Multicasting provides the most efficient usage of bandwidth, especially when there are
large numbers of clients viewing simultaneously. Note however, that a multicast broadcast
cannot pass a network router unless the router is configured to allow this. It is thus not
possible to multicast over e.g. the Internet.
Unicasting should be used for video-on-demand broadcasting, so that there is no video
traffic on the network until a client connects and requests the stream. However, if more
and more unicast clients connect simultaneously, the AXIS 210/211 will at some point
become overloaded. There is also a maximum of 20 simultaneous viewers to be considered.