Skip to main content

Duplicating RTP Streams
draft-ietf-avtext-rtp-duplication-02

The information below is for an old version of the document.
Document Type
This is an older version of an Internet-Draft that was ultimately published as RFC 7198.
Authors Ali C. Begen , Colin Perkins
Last updated 2013-03-21
RFC stream Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
Formats
Reviews
Additional resources Mailing list discussion
Stream WG state In WG Last Call
Document shepherd (None)
IESG IESG state Became RFC 7198 (Proposed Standard)
Consensus boilerplate Unknown
Telechat date (None)
Responsible AD (None)
Send notices to (None)
draft-ietf-avtext-rtp-duplication-02
AVTEXT                                                          A. Begen
Internet-Draft                                                     Cisco
Intended status: Standards Track                              C. Perkins
Expires: September 22, 2013                        University of Glasgow
                                                          March 21, 2013

                        Duplicating RTP Streams
                  draft-ietf-avtext-rtp-duplication-02

Abstract

   Packet loss is undesirable for real-time multimedia sessions, but can
   occur due to congestion, or other unplanned network outages.  This is
   especially true for IP multicast networks, where packet loss patterns
   can vary greatly between receivers.  One technique that can be used
   to recover from packet loss without incurring unbounded delay for all
   the receivers is to duplicate the packets and send them in separate
   redundant streams.  This document explains how Real-time Transport
   Protocol (RTP) streams can be duplicated without breaking RTP or RTP
   Control Protocol (RTCP) rules.

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
   working documents as Internet-Drafts.  The list of current Internet-
   Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.

   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
   and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
   time.  It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
   material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

   This Internet-Draft will expire on September 22, 2013.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2013 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
   (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
   publication of this document.  Please review these documents

Begen & Perkins        Expires September 22, 2013               [Page 1]
Internet-Draft              RTP Duplication                   March 2013

   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 as described in Section 4.e of
   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
   described in the Simplified BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  Terminology and Requirements Notation . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   3.  Dual Streaming Use Cases  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     3.1.  Temporal Redundancy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     3.2.  Spatial Redundancy  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     3.3.  Dual Streaming over a Single Path or Multiple Paths . . .   4
   4.  Use of RTP and RTCP with Temporal Redundancy  . . . . . . . .   5
     4.1.  RTCP Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     4.2.  Signaling Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   5.  Use of RTP and RTCP with Spatial Redundancy . . . . . . . . .   7
     5.1.  RTCP Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     5.2.  Signaling Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   6.  Use of RTP and RTCP with Temporal and Spatial Redundancy  . .   8
   7.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   8.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   9.  Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   10. References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     10.1.  Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     10.2.  Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10

1.  Introduction

   The Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) [RFC3550] is widely used today
   for delivering IPTV traffic, and other real-time multimedia sessions.
   Many of these applications support very large numbers of receivers,
   and rely on intra-domain UDP/IP multicast for efficient distribution
   of traffic within the network.

   While this combination has proved successful, there does exist a
   weakness.  As [RFC2354] noted, packet loss is not avoidable, even in
   a carefully managed network.  This loss might be due to congestion,
   it might also be a result of an unplanned outage caused by a flapping
   link, link or interface failure, a software bug, or a maintenance
   person accidentally cutting the wrong fiber.  Since UDP/IP flows do
   not provide any means for detecting loss and retransmitting packets,
   it leaves up to the RTP layer and the applications to detect, and
   recover from, packet loss.

Begen & Perkins        Expires September 22, 2013               [Page 2]
Internet-Draft              RTP Duplication                   March 2013

   One technique to recover from packet loss without incurring unbounded
   delay for all the receivers is to duplicate the packets and send them
   in separate redundant streams.  Variations on this idea have been
   implemented and deployed today [IC2011].  However, duplication of RTP
   streams without breaking the RTP and RTCP functionality has not been
   documented properly.  This document explains how duplication can be
   achieved for RTP streams.

   Stream duplication offers a simple way to protect media flows from
   packet loss.  It has a comparatively high bandwidth overhead, since
   everything is sent twice, but with a low processing overhead.  It is
   also very predictable in its overheads.  Alternative approaches may
   be suitable in some cases, for example retransmission-based recovery
   [RFC4588] or Forward Error Correction [RFC6363].

2.  Terminology and Requirements Notation

   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
   [RFC2119].

3.  Dual Streaming Use Cases

   Dual streaming refers to a technique that involves transmitting two
   redundant RTP streams (the original plus its duplicate) of the same
   content, with each stream capable of supporting the playback when
   there is no packet loss.  Therefore, adding an additional RTP stream
   provides a protection against packet loss.  The level of protection
   depends on how the packets are sent and transmitted inside the
   network.

   It is important to note that dual streaming can easily be extended to
   support cases when more than two streams are desired.  However, using
   three or more streams is rare in practice, due to the high overhead
   that it incurs.

3.1.  Temporal Redundancy

   From a routing perspective, two streams are considered identical if
   the following two IP header fields are the same, since they will be
   both routed over the same path:

   o  IP Source Address

   o  IP Destination Address

Begen & Perkins        Expires September 22, 2013               [Page 3]
Internet-Draft              RTP Duplication                   March 2013

   Two routing-plane identical RTP streams might carry the same payload,
   but can use different Synchronization Sources (SSRC) to differentiate
   the RTP packets belonging to each stream.  In the context of dual RTP
   streaming, we assume that the sender duplicates the RTP packets and
   sends them in separate RTP streams, each with a unique SSRC.  All the
   redundant streams are transmitted in the same RTP session.

   For example, one main stream and its duplicate stream can be sent to
   the same IP destination address and UDP destination port with a
   certain delay between them [I-D.ietf-mmusic-delayed-duplication].
   The streams carry the same payload in their respective RTP packets
   with identical sequence numbers.  This allows receivers (or other
   nodes responsible for gap filling and duplicate suppression) to
   identify and suppress the duplicate packets, and subsequently produce
   a hopefully loss-free and duplication-free output stream.  This
   process is commonly called stream merging or de-duplication.

3.2.  Spatial Redundancy

   An RTP source might be associated with multiple network interfaces,
   allowing it to send two redundant streams from two separate source
   addresses.  Such streams can be routed over diverse or identical
   paths depending on the routing algorithm used inside the network.  At
   the receiving end, the node responsible for duplicate suppression can
   look into various RTP header fields, for example SSRC and sequence
   number, to identify and suppress the duplicate packets.

   If source-specific multicast (SSM) transport is used to carry such
   redundant streams, there will be a separate SSM session for each
   redundant stream since the streams are sourced from different
   interfaces (i.e., IP addresses).  Thus, the receiving host has to
   join each SSM session separately.

   Alternatively, an RTP source might send the redundant streams to
   separate IP destination addresses.

3.3.  Dual Streaming over a Single Path or Multiple Paths

   Having described the characteristics of the streams, one can reach
   the following conclusions:

   1.  When two routing-plane identical streams are used, the two
       streams will have identical IP headers.  This makes it
       impractical to forward the packets onto different paths.  In
       order to minimize packet loss, the packets belonging to one
       stream are often interleaved with packets belonging to its
       duplicate stream, and with a delay, so that if there is a packet
       loss, such a delay would allow the same packet from the duplicate

Begen & Perkins        Expires September 22, 2013               [Page 4]
Internet-Draft              RTP Duplication                   March 2013

       stream to reach the receiver because the chances that the same
       packet is lost in transit again is often small.  This is what is
       also known as Time-shifted Redundancy, Temporal Redundancy or
       simply Delayed Duplication [I-D.ietf-mmusic-delayed-duplication]
       [IC2011].  This approach can be used with both types of dual
       streaming, described in Section 3.1 and Section 3.2.

   2.  If the two streams have different IP headers, an additional
       opportunity arises in that one is able to build a network, with
       physically diverse paths, to deliver the two streams concurrently
       to the intended receivers.  This reduces the delay when packet
       loss occurs and needs to be recovered.  Additionally, it also
       further reduces chances for packet loss.  An unrecoverable loss
       happens only when two network failures happen in such a way that
       the same packet is affected on both paths.  This is referred to
       as Spatial Diversity or Spatial Redundancy [IC2011].  The
       techniques used to build diverse paths are beyond the scope of
       this document.

       Note that spatial redundancy often offers less delay in
       recovering from packet loss provided that the forwarding delay of
       the network paths are more or less the same (This is often made
       sure through careful network design).  For both temporal and
       spatial redundancy approaches, packet misordering might still
       happen and needs to be handled using the sequence numbers of some
       sort (e.g., RTP sequence numbers).

   To summarize, dual streaming allows an application and a network to
   work together to provide a near zero-loss transport with a bounded or
   minimum delay.  The additional advantage includes a predictable
   bandwidth overhead that is proportional to the minimum bandwidth
   needed for the multimedia session, but independent of the number of
   receivers experiencing a packet loss and requesting a retransmission.
   For a survey and comparison of similar approaches, refer to [IC2011].

4.  Use of RTP and RTCP with Temporal Redundancy

   To achieve temporal redundancy, the main and duplicate RTP streams
   SHOULD be sent using the sample 5-tuple of transport protocol, source
   and destination IP addresses, and source and destination transport
   ports.  Due to the possible presence of network address and port
   translation (NAPT) devices, load balancers, or other middleboxes, use
   of anything other than an identical 5-tuple might also cause spatial
   redundancy (which might introduce an additional delay due to the
   delta between the path delays), and so is NOT RECOMMENDED unless the
   path is known to be free of such middleboxes.

Begen & Perkins        Expires September 22, 2013               [Page 5]
Internet-Draft              RTP Duplication                   March 2013

   Since the main and duplicate RTP streams follow an identical path,
   they are part of the same RTP session.  Accordingly, the sender MUST
   choose a different SSRC for the duplicate RTP stream than it chose
   for the main RTP stream, following the rules in [RFC3550] Section 8.

4.1.  RTCP Considerations

   If RTCP is being sent for the main RTP stream, then the sender MUST
   also generate RTCP for the duplicate RTP stream.  The RTCP for the
   duplicate RTP stream is generated exactly as-if the duplicate RTP
   stream were a regular media stream.  The sender MUST NOT duplicate
   the RTCP packets sent for the main RTP stream when sending the
   duplicate stream, instead it MUST generate new RTCP reports for the
   duplicate stream.  The sender MUST use the same RTCP CNAME in the
   RTCP reports it sends for both streams, so that the receiver can
   synchronize them.

   The main and duplicate streams are conceptually synchronized using
   the standard RTCP Sender Report-based mechanism, deriving a mapping
   between their timelines.  However, the RTP timestamps and sequence
   numbers MUST be identical in the main and duplicate streams, making
   the mapping quite trivial.

   Both the main and duplicate RTP streams, and their corresponding RTCP
   reports, will be received.  If RTCP is used, receivers MUST generate
   RTCP reports for both the main and duplicate streams in the usual
   way, treating them as entirely separate media streams.

4.2.  Signaling Considerations

   Signaling is needed to allow the receiver to determine that an RTP
   stream is a duplicate of another, rather than a separate stream that
   needs to be rendered in parallel.  There are two parts to this: an
   SDP extension is needed in the offer/answer exchange to negotiate
   support for temporal redundancy; and signaling is needed to indicate
   which stream is the duplicate (the latter can be done in-band using
   an RTCP extension, or out-of-band in the SDP description).

   We require out-of-band signaling for both features.  The required SDP
   attribute to signal duplication in the SDP offer/answer exchange
   ('duplication-delay') is defined in
   [I-D.ietf-mmusic-delayed-duplication].  The required SDP grouping
   semantics are defined in [I-D.ietf-mmusic-duplication-grouping].

   In the following SDP example, a video stream is duplicated, and the
   main and duplicate streams are transmitted in two separate SSRCs
   (1000 and 1010):

Begen & Perkins        Expires September 22, 2013               [Page 6]
Internet-Draft              RTP Duplication                   March 2013

     v=0
     o=ali 1122334455 1122334466 IN IP4 dup.example.com
     s=Delayed Duplication
     t=0 0
     m=video 30000 RTP/AVP 100
     c=IN IP4 233.252.0.1/127
     a=source-filter:incl IN IP4 233.252.0.1 198.51.100.1
     a=rtpmap:100 MP2T/90000
     a=ssrc:1000 cname:ch1a@example.com
     a=ssrc:1010 cname:ch1a@example.com
     a=ssrc-group:DUP 1000 1010
     a=duplication-delay:50
     a=mid:Ch1

   As specified in Section 3.2 of
   [I-D.ietf-mmusic-duplication-grouping], it is advisable that the SSRC
   listed first in the "a=ssrc-group:" line (i.e., SSRC of 1000) is sent
   first, with the other SSRC (i.e., SSRC of 1010) being the time-
   delayed duplicate.  This is not critical, however, and a receiving
   host should size its playout buffer based on the 'duplication-delay'
   attribute, and play the stream that arrives first in preference, with
   the other stream acting as a repair stream, irrespective of the order
   in which they are signaled.

5.  Use of RTP and RTCP with Spatial Redundancy

   When using spatial redundancy, the duplicate RTP stream is sent using
   a different source and/or destination address/port pair.  This will
   be a separate RTP session to the session conveying the main RTP
   stream.  Thus, the SSRCs used for the main and duplicate streams MUST
   be chosen randomly, following the rules in Section 8 of [RFC3550].
   Accordingly, they will almost certainly not match each other.  The
   sender MUST, however, use the same RTCP CNAME for both the main and
   duplicate streams.  An "a=group:DUP" line or "a=ssrc-group:DUP" line
   is used to indicate duplication.

5.1.  RTCP Considerations

   If RTCP is being sent for the main RTP stream, then the sender MUST
   also generate RTCP for the duplicate RTP stream.  The RTCP for the
   duplicate RTP stream is generated exactly as-if the duplicate RTP
   stream were a regular media stream.  The sender MUST NOT duplicate
   the RTCP packets sent for the main RTP stream when sending the
   duplicate stream, instead it MUST generate new RTCP reports for the
   duplicate stream.  The sender MUST use the same RTCP CNAME in the
   RTCP reports it sends for both streams, so that the receiver can
   synchronize them.

Begen & Perkins        Expires September 22, 2013               [Page 7]
Internet-Draft              RTP Duplication                   March 2013

   The main and duplicate streams are conceptually synchronized using
   the standard RTCP Sender Report-based mechanism, deriving a mapping
   between their timelines.  However, the RTP timestamps and sequence
   numbers MUST be identical in the main and duplicate streams, making
   the mapping quite trivial.

   Both the main and duplicate RTP streams, and their corresponding RTCP
   reports, will be received.  If RTCP is used, receivers MUST generate
   RTCP reports for both the main and duplicate streams in the usual
   way, treating them as entirely separate media streams.

5.2.  Signaling Considerations

   The required SDP grouping semantics have been defined in
   [I-D.ietf-mmusic-duplication-grouping].  In the following example,
   the redundant streams have different IP destination addresses.  The
   example shows the same UDP port number and IP source address for each
   stream, but either or both could have been different for the two
   streams.

     v=0
     o=ali 1122334455 1122334466 IN IP4 dup.example.com
     s=DUP Grouping Semantics
     t=0 0
     a=group:DUP S1a S1b
     m=video 30000 RTP/AVP 100
     c=IN IP4 233.252.0.1/127
     a=source-filter:incl IN IP4 233.252.0.1 198.51.100.1
     a=rtpmap:100 MP2T/90000
     a=mid:S1a
     m=video 30000 RTP/AVP 101
     c=IN IP4 233.252.0.2/127
     a=source-filter:incl IN IP4 233.252.0.2 198.51.100.1
     a=rtpmap:101 MP2T/90000
     a=mid:S1b

6.  Use of RTP and RTCP with Temporal and Spatial Redundancy

   This uses the same RTP/RTCP mechanisms from Sections Section 4 and
   Section 5, plus a combination of both sets of signaling.

7.  Security Considerations

   The security considerations of [RFC3550],
   [I-D.ietf-mmusic-delayed-duplication], and
   [I-D.ietf-mmusic-duplication-grouping] apply.

Begen & Perkins        Expires September 22, 2013               [Page 8]
Internet-Draft              RTP Duplication                   March 2013

   Stream de-duplication can be done by an in-network middlebox,
   rewriting the SSRC as appropriate.  If the Secure RTP (SRTP) profile
   [RFC3711] is used to authenticate RTP packets, such rewriting is not
   possible without breaking the authentication, unless the de-
   duplication middlebox is trusted to re-authenticate the packets.
   This would require additional signaling that is not specified here.
   The use of the encryption features of SRTP does not affect stream de-
   duplication middleboxes, since the RTP headers are sent in the clear.

8.  IANA Considerations

   No IANA actions are required.

9.  Acknowledgments

   Thanks to Magnus Westerlund for his suggestions.

10.  References

10.1.  Normative References

   [RFC3550]  Schulzrinne, H., Casner, S., Frederick, R., and V.
              Jacobson, "RTP: A Transport Protocol for Real-Time
              Applications", STD 64, RFC 3550, July 2003.

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.

   [I-D.ietf-mmusic-delayed-duplication]
              Begen, A., Cai, Y., and H. Ou, "Delayed Duplication
              Attribute in the Session Description Protocol", draft-
              ietf-mmusic-delayed-duplication-01 (work in progress),
              March 2013.

   [I-D.ietf-mmusic-duplication-grouping]
              Begen, A., Cai, Y., and H. Ou, "Duplication Grouping
              Semantics in the Session Description Protocol", draft-
              ietf-mmusic-duplication-grouping-01 (work in progress),
              March 2013.

   [RFC3711]  Baugher, M., McGrew, D., Naslund, M., Carrara, E., and K.
              Norrman, "The Secure Real-time Transport Protocol (SRTP)",
              RFC 3711, March 2004.

10.2.  Informative References

   [RFC2354]  Perkins, C. and O. Hodson, "Options for Repair of
              Streaming Media", RFC 2354, June 1998.

Begen & Perkins        Expires September 22, 2013               [Page 9]
Internet-Draft              RTP Duplication                   March 2013

   [RFC4588]  Rey, J., Leon, D., Miyazaki, A., Varsa, V., and R.
              Hakenberg, "RTP Retransmission Payload Format", RFC 4588,
              July 2006.

   [RFC6363]  Watson, M., Begen, A., and V. Roca, "Forward Error
              Correction (FEC) Framework", RFC 6363, October 2011.

   [IC2011]   Evans, J., Begen, A., Greengrass, J., and C. Filsfils,
              "Toward Lossless Video Transport (to appear in IEEE
              Internet Computing)", November 2011.

Authors' Addresses

   Ali Begen
   Cisco
   181 Bay Street
   Toronto, ON  M5J 2T3
   CANADA

   Email: abegen@cisco.com

   Colin Perkins
   University of Glasgow
   School of Computing Science
   Glasgow  G12 8QQ
   UK

   Email: csp@csperkins.org

Begen & Perkins        Expires September 22, 2013              [Page 10]