Media over QUIC Transport
draft-ietf-moq-transport-16
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| Authors | Suhas Nandakumar , Victor Vasiliev , Ian Swett , Alan Frindell | ||
| Last updated | 2026-01-13 (Latest revision 2025-10-20) | ||
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draft-ietf-moq-transport-16
Media Over QUIC S. Nandakumar
Internet-Draft Cisco
Intended status: Standards Track V. Vasiliev
Expires: 17 July 2026 I. Swett, Ed.
Google
A. Frindell, Ed.
Meta
13 January 2026
Media over QUIC Transport
draft-ietf-moq-transport-16
Abstract
This document defines the core behavior for Media over QUIC Transport
(MOQT), a media transport protocol designed to operate over QUIC and
WebTransport, which have similar functionality. MOQT allows a
producer of media to publish data and have it consumed via
subscription by a multiplicity of endpoints. It supports
intermediate content distribution networks and is designed for high
scale and low latency distribution.
About This Document
This note is to be removed before publishing as an RFC.
The latest revision of this draft can be found at https://moq-
wg.github.io/moq-transport/draft-ietf-moq-transport.html. Status
information for this document may be found at
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-moq-transport/.
Discussion of this document takes place on the Media Over QUIC
Working Group mailing list (mailto:moq@ietf.org), which is archived
at https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/moq/. Subscribe at
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/moq/.
Source for this draft and an issue tracker can be found at
https://github.com/moq-wg/moq-transport.
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
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Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2026 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/
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Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.1. Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.1.1. Latency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.1.2. Leveraging QUIC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.1.3. Convergence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.1.4. Relays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.2. Terms and Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.3. Stream Management Terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.4. Notational Conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.4.1. Location Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.4.2. Key-Value-Pair Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.4.3. Reason Phrase Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.5. Representing Namespace and Track Names . . . . . . . . . 10
2. Object Data Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.1. Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.2. Subgroups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.3. Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.3.1. Group IDs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.4. Track . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.4.1. Track Naming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
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2.4.2. Malformed Tracks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.4.3. Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.5. Extension Headers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
3. Sessions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
3.1. Session establishment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
3.1.1. WebTransport . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
3.1.2. QUIC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
3.1.3. Connection URL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
3.2. Extension Negotiation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
3.3. Session initialization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
3.4. Termination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
3.5. Migration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
3.6. Congestion Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
3.6.1. Bufferbloat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
3.6.2. Application-Limited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
3.6.3. Consistent Throughput . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
4. Modularity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
5. Publishing and Retrieving Tracks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
5.1. Subscriptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
5.1.1. Subscription State Management . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
5.1.2. Subscription Filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
5.1.3. Joining an Ongoing Track . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
5.2. Fetch State Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
6. Namespace Discovery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
6.1. Subscribing to Namespaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
6.2. Publishing Namespaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
7. Priorities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
7.1. Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
7.2. Scheduling Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
7.3. Considerations for Setting Priorities . . . . . . . . . . 33
8. Relays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
8.1. Caching Relays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
8.2. Forward Handling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
8.3. Multiple Publishers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
8.4. Subscriber Interactions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
8.4.1. Graceful Subscriber Relay Switchover . . . . . . . . 37
8.5. Publisher Interactions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
8.5.1. Graceful Publisher Relay Switchover . . . . . . . . . 39
8.6. Relay Track Handling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
8.7. Relay Object Handling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
9. Control Messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
9.1. Request ID . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
9.2. Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
9.2.1. Parameter Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
9.2.2. Message Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
9.3. CLIENT_SETUP and SERVER_SETUP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
9.3.1. Setup Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
9.4. GOAWAY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
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9.5. MAX_REQUEST_ID . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
9.6. REQUESTS_BLOCKED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
9.7. REQUEST_OK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
9.8. REQUEST_ERROR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
9.9. SUBSCRIBE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
9.10. SUBSCRIBE_OK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
9.11. REQUEST_UPDATE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
9.11.1. Updating Subscriptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
9.12. UNSUBSCRIBE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
9.13. PUBLISH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
9.14. PUBLISH_OK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
9.15. PUBLISH_DONE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
9.16. FETCH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
9.16.1. Standalone Fetch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
9.16.2. Joining Fetches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
9.16.3. Fetch Handling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
9.17. FETCH_OK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
9.18. FETCH_CANCEL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
9.19. TRACK_STATUS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
9.20. PUBLISH_NAMESPACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
9.21. NAMESPACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
9.22. PUBLISH_NAMESPACE_DONE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
9.23. NAMESPACE_DONE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
9.24. PUBLISH_NAMESPACE_CANCEL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
9.25. SUBSCRIBE_NAMESPACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
10. Data Streams and Datagrams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
10.1. Track Alias . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
10.2. Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
10.2.1. Canonical Object Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
10.3. Datagrams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
10.3.1. Object Datagram . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
10.4. Streams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
10.4.1. Stream Cancellation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
10.4.2. Subgroup Header . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
10.4.3. Closing Subgroup Streams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
10.4.4. Fetch Header . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
10.5. Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
11. Extension Headers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
11.1. DELIVERY TIMEOUT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
11.1.1. MAX CACHE DURATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
11.2. Immutable Extensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
11.3. Prior Group ID Gap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
11.4. Prior Object ID Gap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
12. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
12.1. Resource Exhaustion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
12.2. Timeouts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
12.3. Relay security considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
12.3.1. State maintenance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
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12.3.2. SUBSCRIBE_NAMESPACE with short prefixes . . . . . . 95
13. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
13.1. Authorization Token Alias Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
13.2. Message Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
13.3. Extension Headers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
13.4. Error Codes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
13.4.1. Session Termination Error Codes . . . . . . . . . . 97
13.4.2. REQUEST_ERROR Codes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
13.4.3. PUBLISH_DONE Codes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
13.4.4. Data Stream Reset Error Codes . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
Appendix A. Change Log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
A.1. Since draft-ietf-moq-transport-15 . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
A.2. Since draft-ietf-moq-transport-14 . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
A.3. Since draft-ietf-moq-transport-13 . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
A.4. Since draft-ietf-moq-transport-12 . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
A.5. Since draft-ietf-moq-transport-11 . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
A.6. Since draft-ietf-moq-transport-10 . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
1. Introduction
Media Over QUIC Transport (MOQT) is a protocol that is optimized for
the QUIC protocol [QUIC], either directly or via WebTransport
[WebTransport], for the dissemination of media. MOQT utilizes a
publish/subscribe workflow in which producers of media publish data
in response to subscription requests from a multiplicity of
endpoints. MOQT supports wide range of use-cases with different
resiliency and latency (live, interactive) needs without compromising
the scalability and cost effectiveness associated with content
delivery networks.
MOQT is a generic protocol designed to work in concert with multiple
MoQ Streaming Formats. These MoQ Streaming Formats define how
content is encoded, packaged, and mapped to MOQT objects, along with
policies for discovery and subscription.
* Section 2 describes the data model employed by MOQT.
* Section 3 covers aspects of setting up an MOQT session.
* Section 7 covers mechanisms for prioritizing subscriptions.
* Section 8 covers behavior at the relay entities.
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* Section 9 covers how control messages are encoded on the wire.
* Section 10 covers how data messages are encoded on the wire.
1.1. Motivation
The development of MOQT is driven by goals in a number of areas -
specifically latency, the robust feature set of QUIC and relay
support.
1.1.1. Latency
Latency is necessary to correct for variable network throughput.
Ideally live content is consumed at the same bitrate it is produced.
End-to-end latency would be fixed and only subject to encoding and
transmission delays. Unfortunately, networks have variable
throughput, primarily due to congestion. Attempting to deliver
content encoded at a higher bitrate than the network can cause
queuing along the path from producer to consumer. The speed at which
a protocol can detect and respond to congestion determines the
overall latency. TCP-based protocols are simple but are slow to
detect congestion and suffer from head-of-line blocking. Protocols
utilizing UDP directly can avoid queuing, but the application is then
responsible for the complexity of fragmentation, congestion control,
retransmissions, receiver feedback, reassembly, and more. One goal
of MOQT is to achieve the best of both these worlds: leverage the
features of QUIC to create a simple yet flexible low latency protocol
that can rapidly detect and respond to congestion.
1.1.2. Leveraging QUIC
The parallel nature of QUIC streams can provide improvements in the
face of loss. A goal of MOQT is to design a streaming protocol to
leverage the transmission benefits afforded by parallel QUIC streams
as well exercising options for flexible loss recovery.
1.1.3. Convergence
Some live media architectures today have separate protocols for
ingest and distribution, for example RTMP and HTTP based HLS or DASH.
Switching protocols necessitates intermediary origins which re-
package the media content. While specialization can have its
benefits, there are efficiency gains to be had in not having to re-
package content. A goal of MOQT is to develop a single protocol
which can be used for transmission from contribution to distribution.
A related goal is the ability to support existing encoding and
packaging schemas, both for backwards compatibility and for
interoperability with the established content preparation ecosystem.
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1.1.4. Relays
An integral feature of a protocol being successful is its ability to
deliver media at scale. Greatest scale is achieved when third-party
networks, independent of both the publisher and subscriber, can be
leveraged to relay the content. These relays must cache content for
distribution efficiency while simultaneously routing content and
deterministically responding to congestion in a multi-tenant network.
A goal of MOQT is to treat relays as first-class citizens of the
protocol and ensure that objects are structured such that information
necessary for distribution is available to relays while the media
content itself remains opaque and private.
1.2. 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.
The following terms are used with the first letter capitalized.
Application: The entity using MOQT to transmit and receive data.
Client: The party initiating a Transport Session.
Server: The party accepting an incoming Transport Session.
Endpoint: A Client or Server.
Peer: The other endpoint than the one being described.
Publisher: An endpoint that handles subscriptions by sending
requested Objects from the requested track.
Subscriber: An endpoint that subscribes to and receives tracks.
Original Publisher: The initial publisher of a given track.
End Subscriber: A subscriber that initiates a subscription and does
not send the data on to other subscribers.
Relay: An entity that is both a Publisher and a Subscriber, is not
the Original Publisher or End Subscriber, and conforms to all
requirements in Section 8.
Upstream: In the direction of the Original Publisher.
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Downstream: In the direction of the End Subscriber(s).
Transport Session: A raw QUIC connection or a WebTransport session.
Stream: A bidirectional or unidirectional bytestream provided by the
QUIC transport or WebTransport.
Congestion: Packet loss and queuing caused by degraded or overloaded
networks.
Group: A temporal sequence of objects. A group represents a join
point in a track. See (Section 2.3).
Object: An object is an addressable unit whose payload is a sequence
of bytes. Objects form the base element in the MOQT data model.
See (Section 2.1).
Track: A track is a collection of groups. See (Section 2.4).
1.3. Stream Management Terms
This document uses stream management terms described in [RFC9000],
Section 1.3 including STOP_SENDING, RESET_STREAM and FIN.
1.4. Notational Conventions
This document uses the conventions detailed in ([RFC9000],
Section 1.3) when describing the binary encoding.
To reduce unnecessary use of bandwidth, variable length integers
SHOULD be encoded using the least number of bytes possible to
represent the required value.
1.4.1. Location Structure
Location identifies a particular Object in a Group within a Track.
Location {
Group (i),
Object (i)
}
Figure 1: Location structure
In this document, a Location can be expressed in the form of
{GroupID, ObjectID}, where GroupID and ObjectID indicate the Group ID
and Object ID of the Location, respectively. The constituent parts
of any Location A can be referred to using A.Group or A.Object.
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Location A < Location B if:
A.Group < B.Group || (A.Group == B.Group && A.Object < B.Object)
1.4.2. Key-Value-Pair Structure
Key-Value-Pair is a flexible structure designed to carry key/value
pairs in which the key is a variable length integer and the value is
either a variable length integer or a byte field of arbitrary length.
Key-Value-Pairs encode a Type value as a delta from the previous Type
value, or from 0 if there is no previous Type value. This is
efficient on the wire and makes it easy to ensure there is only one
instance of a type when needed. The previous Type value plus the
Delta Type MUST NOT be greater than 2^64 - 1. If a Delta Type is
received that would be too large, the Session MUST be closed with a
PROTOCOL_VIOLATION.
Key-Value-Pair is used in both the data plane and control plane, but
is optimized for use in the data plane.
Key-Value-Pair {
Delta Type (i),
[Length (i),]
Value (..)
}
Figure 2: MOQT Key-Value-Pair
* Delta Type: an unsigned integer, encoded as a varint, identifying
the Type as a delta encoded value from the previous Type, if any.
The Type identifies the type of value and also the subsequent
serialization.
* Length: Only present when Type is odd. Specifies the length of
the Value field in bytes. The maximum length of a value is 2^16-1
bytes. If an endpoint receives a length larger than the maximum,
it MUST close the session with a PROTOCOL_VIOLATION.
* Value: A single varint encoded value when Type is even, otherwise
a sequence of Length bytes.
If a receiver understands a Type, and the following Value or Length/
Value does not match the serialization defined by that Type, the
receiver MUST close the session with error code
KEY_VALUE_FORMATTING_ERROR.
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1.4.3. Reason Phrase Structure
Reason Phrase provides a way for the sender to encode additional
diagnostic information about the error condition, where appropriate.
Reason Phrase {
Reason Phrase Length (i),
Reason Phrase Value (..)
}
* Reason Phrase Length: A variable-length integer specifying the
length of the reason phrase in bytes. The reason phrase length
has a maximum value of 1024 bytes. If an endpoint receives a
length exceeding the maximum, it MUST close the session with a
PROTOCOL_VIOLATION
* Reason Phrase Value: Additional diagnostic information about the
error condition. The reason phrase value is encoded as UTF-8
string and does not carry information, such as language tags, that
would aid comprehension by any entity other than the one that
created the text.
1.5. Representing Namespace and Track Names
There is often a need to render namespace tuples and track names for
purposes such as logging, representing track filenames, or use in
certain authorization verification schemes. The namespace and track
name are binary, so they need to be converted to a safe form.
The following format is RECOMMENDED:
* Each of the namespace tuples are rendered in order with a hyphen
(-) between them followed by the track name with a double hyphen
(--) between the last namespace and track name.
* Bytes in the range a-z, A-Z, 0-9 as well as _ (0x5f) are output as
is, while all other bytes are encoded as a period (.) symbol
followed by exactly two lower case hex digits.
The goal of this format is to have a format that is both filename and
URL safe. It allows many common names to be rendered in an easily
human readable form while still supporting binary values.
Example:
example.2enet-team2-project_x--report
Namespace tuples: (example.net, team2, project_x)
Track name: report
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2. Object Data Model
MOQT has a hierarchical data model, comprised of tracks which contain
groups, and groups that contain objects. Inside of a group, the
objects can be organized into subgroups.
To give an example of how an application might use this data model,
consider an application sending high and low resolution video using a
codec with temporal scalability. Each resolution is sent as a
separate track to allow the subscriber to pick the appropriate
resolution given the display environment and available bandwidth.
Each independently coded sequence of pictures in a resolution is sent
as a group as the first picture in the sequence can be used as a
random access point. This allows the client to join at the logical
points where decoding of the media can start without needing
information before the join points. The temporal layers are sent as
separate subgroups to allow the priority mechanism to favor lower
temporal layers when there is not enough bandwidth to send all
temporal layers. Each frame of video is sent as a single object.
2.1. Objects
The basic data element of MOQT is an object. An object is an
addressable unit whose payload is a sequence of bytes. All objects
belong to a group, indicating ordering and potential dependencies
(see Section 2.3). An object is uniquely identified by its track
namespace, track name, group ID, and object ID, and must be an
identical sequence of bytes regardless of how or where it is
retrieved. An Object can become unavailable, but its contents MUST
NOT change over time.
Objects are comprised of two parts: metadata and a payload. The
metadata is never encrypted and is always visible to relays (see
Section 8). The payload portion may be encrypted, in which case it
is only visible to the Original Publisher and End Subscribers. The
Original Publisher is solely responsible for the content of the
object payload. This includes the underlying encoding, compression,
any end-to-end encryption, or authentication. A relay MUST NOT
combine, split, or otherwise modify object payloads.
Objects within a Group are in ascending order by Object ID.
From the perspective of a subscriber or a cache, an Object can be in
three possible states:
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1. The Object is known to not exist. This state is permanent. MOQT
has multiple ways to communicate that a certain range of objects
does not exist, including the Object Status field, and the use of
gaps in FETCH responses.
2. The Object is known to exist. From this state, it can transition
to not existing, but not vice versa.
3. The state of the Object is unknown, either because it has not
been yet received, or it has not been produced yet.
Whenever the publisher communicates that certain objects do not
exist, this fact is expressed as a contiguous range of non-existent
objects and by include extension headers indicating the group/object
gaps; MOQT implementers should take that into account when selecting
appropriate data structures.
2.2. Subgroups
A subgroup is a sequence of one or more objects from the same group
(Section 2.3) in ascending order by Object ID. Objects in a subgroup
have a dependency and priority relationship consistent with sharing a
stream and are sent on a single stream whenever possible. A Group is
delivered using at least as many streams as there are Subgroups,
typically with a one-to-one mapping between Subgroups and streams.
When an Object's forwarding preference (see Section 10.2.1) is
"Datagram", it is not sent in Subgroups, does not belong to a
Subgroup in any way, and the description in the remainder of this
section does not apply.
Streams offer in-order reliable delivery and the ability to cancel
sending and retransmission of data. Furthermore, many QUIC and
WebTransport implementations offer the ability to control the
relative scheduling priority of pending stream data.
Every Object within a Group belongs to exactly one Subgroup or
Datagram.
When Objects are sent in a subscription (see Section 5.1), Objects
from two subgroups MUST NOT be sent on the same stream, and Objects
from the same Subgroup MUST NOT be sent on different streams, unless
one of the streams was reset prematurely, or upstream conditions have
forced objects from a Subgroup to be sent out of Object ID order.
Original publishers assign each Subgroup a Subgroup ID, and do so as
they see fit. The scope of a Subgroup ID is a Group, so Subgroups
from different Groups MAY share a Subgroup ID without implying any
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relationship between them. In general, publishers assign objects to
subgroups in order to leverage the features of streams as described
above.
In general, if Object B is dependent on Object A, then delivery of B
can follow A, i.e. A and B can be usefully delivered over a single
stream. If an Object is dependent on all previous Objects in a
Subgroup, it likely fits best in that Subgroup. If an Object is not
dependent on any of the Objects in a Subgroup, it likely belongs in a
different Subgroup.
When assigning Objects to different Subgroups, the Original Publisher
makes a reasonable tradeoff between having an optimal mapping of
Object relationships in a Group and minimizing the number of streams
used.
2.3. Groups
A group is a collection of Objects and is a sub-unit of a Track
(Section 2.4). Groups SHOULD be independently useful, so Objects
within a Group SHOULD NOT depend on Objects in other Groups. A Group
provides a join point for subscriptions, so a subscriber that does
not want to receive the entire Track can opt to receive only Groups
starting from a given Group ID. Groups can contain any number of
Objects.
2.3.1. Group IDs
Within a track, the original publisher SHOULD publish Group IDs which
increase with time (where "time" is defined according to the internal
clock of the media being sent). In some cases, Groups will be
produced in increasing order, but sent to subscribers in a different
order, for example when the subscription's Group Order is Descending.
Due to network reordering and the partial reliability features of
MOQT, Groups can always be received out of order.
As a result, subscribers cannot infer the existence of a Group until
an object in the Group is received. This can create gaps in a cache
that can be filled by doing a Fetch upstream, if necessary.
Applications that cannot produce Group IDs that increase with time
are limited to the subset of MOQT that does not compare group IDs.
Subscribers to these Tracks SHOULD NOT use range filters which span
multiple Groups in FETCH or SUBSCRIBE. SUBSCRIBE and FETCH delivery
use Group Order, so they could have an unexpected delivery order if
Group IDs do not increase with time.
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The amount of time elapsed between publishing an Object in Group ID N
and in a Group ID > N, or even which will be published first, is not
defined by this specification and is defined by the applications
using MOQT.
2.4. Track
A track is a sequence of groups (Section 2.3). It is the entity
against which a subscriber issues a subscription request. A
subscriber can request to receive individual tracks starting at a
group boundary, including any new objects pushed by the publisher
while the track is active.
2.4.1. Track Naming
In MOQT, every track is identified by a Full Track Name, consisting
of a Track Namespace and a Track Name.
Track Namespace is an ordered set of between 1 and 32 Track Namespace
Fields, encoded as follows:
Track Namespace {
Number of Track Namespace Fields (i),
Track Namespace Field (..) ...
}
* Number of Track Namespace Fields: A variable-length integer
specifying the number of Track Namespace Fields in the Track
Namespace.
Each Track Namespace Field is encoded as follows:
Track Namespace Field {
Track Namespace Field Length (i),
Track Namespace Field Value (..)
}
* Track Namespace Field Length: A variable-length integer specifying
the length of the Track Namespace Field in bytes.
* Track Namespace Field Value: A sequence of bytes that forms a
Track Namespace Field.
Each Track Namespace Field Value MUST contain at least one byte. If
an endpoint receives a Track Namespace Field with a Track Namespace
Field Length of 0, it MUST close the session with a
PROTOCOL_VIOLATION.
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The structured nature of Track Namespace allows relays and
applications to manipulate prefixes of a namespace. If an endpoint
receives a Track Namespace consisting of 0 or greater than 32 Track
Namespace Fields, it MUST close the session with a
PROTOCOL_VIOLATION.
Track Name is a sequence of bytes, possibly empty, that identifies an
individual track within the namespace.
The maximum total length of a Full Track Name is 4,096 bytes. The
length of a Full Track Name is computed as the sum of the Track
Namespace Field Length fields and the Track Name Length field. The
length of a Track Namespace is the sum of the Track Namespace Field
Length fields. If an endpoint receives a Track Namespace or a Full
Track Name exceeding 4,096 bytes, it MUST close the session with a
PROTOCOL_VIOLATION.
In this specification, both the Track Namespace Fields and the Track
Name are not constrained to a specific encoding. They carry a
sequence of bytes and comparison between two Track Namespace Fields
or Track Names is done by exact comparison of the bytes.
Specifications that use MOQT may constrain the information in these
fields, for example by restricting them to UTF-8. Any such
specification needs to specify the canonicalization into the bytes in
the Track Namespace Fields or Track Name such that exact comparison
works.
2.4.2. Malformed Tracks
There are multiple ways a publisher can transmit a Track that does
not conform to MOQT constraints. Such a Track is considered
malformed. Some example conditions that constitute a malformed track
when detected by a receiver include:
1. An Object is received in a FETCH response with the same Group ID
as the previous Object, but whose Object ID is not strictly
larger than the previous object.
2. In a FETCH response, an Object with a particular Subgroup ID is
received, but its Publisher Priority is different from that of
the previous Object with the same Subgroup ID.
3. An Object is received in an Ascending FETCH response whose Group
ID is smaller than the previous Object in the response.
4. An Object is received in a Descending FETCH response whose Group
ID is larger than the previous Object in the resopnse.
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5. An Object is received whose Object ID is larger than the final
Object in the Subgroup. The final Object in a Subgroup is the
last Object received on a Subgroup stream before a FIN.
6. A Subgroup is received over multiple transport streams
terminated by FIN with different final Objects.
7. An Object is received in a Group whose Object ID is larger than
the final Object in the Group. The final Object in a Group is
the Object with Status END_OF_GROUP or the last Object sent in a
FETCH that requested the entire Group.
8. An Object is received on a Track whose Group and Object ID are
larger than the final Object in the Track. The final Object in
a Track is the Object with Status END_OF_TRACK or the last
Object sent in a FETCH whose response indicated End of Track.
9. The same Object is received more than once with different
Payload or other immutable properties.
10. An Object is received with a different Forwarding Preference
than previously observed.
The above list of conditions is not considered exhaustive.
When a subscriber detects a Malformed Track, it MUST UNSUBSCRIBE any
subscription and FETCH_CANCEL any fetch for that Track from that
publisher, and SHOULD deliver an error to the application. If a
relay detects a Malformed Track, it MUST immediately terminate
downstream subscriptions with PUBLISH_DONE and reset any fetch
streams with Status Code MALFORMED_TRACK. Object(s) triggering
Malformed Track status MUST NOT be cached.
2.4.3. Scope
An MOQT scope is a set of servers (as identified by their connection
URIs) for which a Full Track Name is guaranteed to be unique and
identify a specific track. It is up to the application using MOQT to
define how broad or narrow the scope is. An application that deals
with connections between devices on a local network may limit the
scope to a single connection; by contrast, an application that uses
multiple CDNs to serve media may require the scope to include all of
those CDNs.
Because each Full Track Name is unique within an MOQT scope, they can
be used as a cache key for the track. If, at a given moment in time,
two tracks within the same scope contain different data, they MUST
have different names and/or namespaces. MOQT provides subscribers
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with the ability to alter the specific manner in which tracks are
delivered via Parameters, but the actual content of the tracks does
not depend on those parameters; this is in contrast to protocols like
HTTP, where request headers can alter the server response.
A publisher that loses state (e.g. crashes) and intends to resume
publishing on the same Track risks colliding with previously
published Objects and violating the above requirements. A publisher
can handle this in application specific ways, for example:
1. Select a unique Track Name or Track Namespace whenever it resumes
publishing. For example, it can base one of the Namespace Fields
on the current time, or select a sufficiently large random value.
2. Resume publishing under a previous Track Name and Namespace and
set the initial Group ID to a unique value guaranteed to be
larger than all previously used groups. This can be done by
choosing a Group ID based on the current time.
3. Use TRACK_STATUS or similar mechanism to query the previous state
to determine the largest published Group ID.
2.5. Extension Headers
Tracks and Objects can have additional relay-visible fields, known as
Extension Headers, which do not require negotiation, and can be used
to alter MoQT Object distribution.
Extension Headers are defined in Section 11 as well as external
specifications and are registered in an IANA table Section 13. These
specifications define the type and value of the header, along with
any rules concerning processing, modification, caching and
forwarding.
If unsupported by the relay, Extension Headers MUST NOT be modified,
MUST be cached as part of the Track or Object and MUST be forwarded
by relays. If a Track or Object arrives with a different set of
unknown extensions than previously cached, the most recent set SHOULD
replace any cached values, removing any unknown values not present in
the new set. Relays MUST NOT attempt to merge sets of unknown
extensions received in different messages.
If supported by the relay and subject to the processing rules
specified in the definition of the extension, Extension Headers MAY
be modified, added, removed, and/or cached by relays.
Extension Headers are serialized as Key-Value-Pairs (see Figure 2).
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Header types are registered in the IANA table 'MOQ Extension
Headers'. See Section 13.
3. Sessions
3.1. Session establishment
This document defines a protocol that can be used interchangeably
both over a QUIC connection directly [QUIC], and over WebTransport
[WebTransport]. Both provide streams and datagrams with similar
semantics (see [I-D.ietf-webtrans-overview], Section 4); thus, the
main difference lies in how the servers are identified and how the
connection is established. The QUIC DATAGRAM extension ([RFC9221])
MUST be supported and negotiated in the QUIC connection used for
MOQT, which is already a requirement for WebTransport over HTTP/3.
The RESET_STREAM_AT [I-D.draft-ietf-quic-reliable-stream-reset]
extension to QUIC can be used by MOQT, but the protocol is also
designed to work correctly when the extension is not supported.
There is no definition of the protocol over other transports, such as
TCP, and applications using MoQ might need to fallback to another
protocol when QUIC or WebTransport aren't available.
MOQT uses ALPN in QUIC and "WT-Available-Protocols" in WebTransport
([WebTransport], Section 3.3) to perform version negotiation.
[[RFC editor: please remove the remainder of this section before
publication.]]
The ALPN value [RFC7301] for the final version of this specification
is moqt. ALPNs used to identify IETF drafts are created by appending
the draft number to "moqt-". For example, draft-ietf-moq-
transport-13 would be identified as "moqt-13".
Note: Draft versions prior to -15 all used moq-00 ALPN, followed by
version negotiation in the CLIENT_SETUP and SERVER_SETUP messages.
3.1.1. WebTransport
An MOQT server that is accessible via WebTransport can be identified
using an HTTPS URI ([RFC9110], Section 4.2.2). An MOQT session can
be established by sending an extended CONNECT request to the host and
the path indicated by the URI, as described in ([WebTransport],
Section 3).
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3.1.2. QUIC
An MOQT server that is accessible via native QUIC can be identified
by a URI with a "moqt" scheme. The "moqt" URI scheme is defined as
follows, using definitions from [RFC3986]:
moqt-URI = "moqt" "://" authority path-abempty [ "?" query ]
The authority portion MUST NOT contain an empty host portion. The
moqt URI scheme supports the /.well-known/ path prefix defined in
[RFC8615].
This protocol does not specify any semantics on the path-abempty and
query portions of the URI. The contents of those are left up to the
application.
The client can establish a connection to an MOQT server identified by
a given URI by setting up a QUIC connection to the host and port
identified by the authority section of the URI. The authority, path-
abempty and query portions of the URI are also transmitted in SETUP
parameters (see Section 9.3.1). If the port is omitted in the URI, a
default port of 443 is used for setting up the QUIC connection.
3.1.3. Connection URL
Each track MAY have one or more associated connection URLs specifying
network hosts through which a track may be accessed. The syntax of
the Connection URL and the associated connection setup procedures are
specific to the underlying transport protocol usage (see Section 3).
3.2. Extension Negotiation
Endpoints use the exchange of Setup messages to negotiate MOQT
extensions. Extensions can define new Message types, new Parameters,
or new framing for Data Streams and Datagrams.
The client and server MUST include all Setup Parameters Section 9.3.1
required for the negotiated MOQT version in CLIENT_SETUP and
SERVER_SETUP.
Clients request the use of extensions by specifying Parameters in
CLIENT_SETUP. The Server responds with Parameters in the
SERVER_SETUP to indicate any extensions it supports.
New versions of MOQT MUST specify which existing extensions can be
used with that version. New extensions MUST specify the existing
versions with which they can be used.
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3.3. Session initialization
The first stream opened is a client-initiated bidirectional control
stream where the endpoints exchange Setup messages (Section 9.3),
followed by other messages defined in Section 9.
This specification only specifies two uses of bidirectional streams,
the control stream, which begins with CLIENT_SETUP, and
SUBSCRIBE_NAMESPACE. Bidirectional streams MUST NOT begin with any
other message type unless negotiated. If they do, the peer MUST
close the Session with a Protocol Violation. Objects are sent on
unidirectional streams.
A unidirectional stream containing Objects or bidirectional stream(s)
containing a SUBSCRIBE_NAMESPACE could arrive prior to the control
stream, in which case the data SHOULD be buffered until the control
stream arrives and setup is complete. If an implementation does not
want to buffer, it MAY reset other bidirectional streams before the
session and control stream are established.
The control stream MUST NOT be closed at the underlying transport
layer during the session's lifetime. Doing so results in the session
being closed as a PROTOCOL_VIOLATION.
3.4. Termination
The Transport Session can be terminated at any point. When native
QUIC is used, the session is closed using the CONNECTION_CLOSE frame
([QUIC], Section 19.19). When WebTransport is used, the session is
closed using the CLOSE_WEBTRANSPORT_SESSION capsule ([WebTransport],
Section 6).
When terminating the Session, the application MAY use any error
message and SHOULD use a relevant code, as defined below:
NO_ERROR (0x0): The session is being terminated without an error.
INTERNAL_ERROR (0x1): An implementation specific error occurred.
UNAUTHORIZED (0x2): The client is not authorized to establish a
session.
PROTOCOL_VIOLATION (0x3): The remote endpoint performed an action
that was disallowed by the specification.
INVALID_REQUEST_ID (0x4): The session was closed because the
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endpoint used a Request ID that was smaller than or equal to a
previously received request ID, or the least- significant bit of
the request ID was incorrect for the endpoint.
DUPLICATE_TRACK_ALIAS (0x5): The endpoint attempted to use a Track
Alias that was already in use.
KEY_VALUE_FORMATTING_ERROR (0x6): The key-value pair has a
formatting error.
TOO_MANY_REQUESTS (0x7): The session was closed because the endpoint
used a Request ID equal to or larger than the current Maximum
Request ID.
INVALID_PATH (0x8): The PATH parameter was used by a server, on a
WebTransport session, or the server does not support the path.
MALFORMED_PATH (0x9): The PATH parameter does not conform to the
rules in Section 9.3.1.2.
GOAWAY_TIMEOUT (0x10): The session was closed because the peer took
too long to close the session in response to a GOAWAY
(Section 9.4) message. See session migration (Section 3.5).
CONTROL_MESSAGE_TIMEOUT (0x11): The session was closed because the
peer took too long to respond to a control message.
DATA_STREAM_TIMEOUT (0x12): The session was closed because the peer
took too long to send data expected on an open Data Stream (see
Section 10). This includes fields of a stream header or an object
header within a data stream. If an endpoint times out waiting for
a new object header on an open subgroup stream, it MAY send a
STOP_SENDING on that stream or terminate the subscription.
AUTH_TOKEN_CACHE_OVERFLOW (0x13): The Session limit Section 9.3.1.4
of the size of all registered Authorization tokens has been
exceeded.
DUPLICATE_AUTH_TOKEN_ALIAS (0x14): Authorization Token attempted to
register an Alias that was in use (see Section 9.2.2.1).
VERSION_NEGOTIATION_FAILED (0x15): The client didn't offer a version
supported by the server.
MALFORMED_AUTH_TOKEN (0x16): Invalid Auth Token serialization during
registration (see Section 9.2.2.1).
UNKNOWN_AUTH_TOKEN_ALIAS (0x17): No registered token found for the
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provided Alias (see Section 9.2.2.1).
EXPIRED_AUTH_TOKEN (0x18): Authorization token has expired
(Section 9.2.2.1).
INVALID_AUTHORITY (0x19): The specified AUTHORITY does not
correspond to this server or cannot be used in this context.
MALFORMED_AUTHORITY (0x1A): The AUTHORITY value is syntactically
invalid.
An endpoint MAY choose to treat a subscription or request specific
error as a session error under certain circumstances, closing the
entire session in response to a condition with a single subscription
or message. Implementations need to consider the impact on other
outstanding subscriptions before making this choice.
3.5. Migration
MOQT requires a long-lived and stateful session. However, a service
provider needs the ability to shutdown/restart a server without
waiting for all sessions to drain naturally, as that can take days
for long-form media. MOQT enables proactively draining sessions via
the GOAWAY message (Section 9.4).
The server sends a GOAWAY message, signaling the client to establish
a new session and migrate any Established subscriptions. The GOAWAY
message optionally contains a new URI for the new session, otherwise
the current URI is reused. The server SHOULD close the session with
GOAWAY_TIMEOUT after a sufficient timeout if there are still open
subscriptions or fetches on a connection.
When the server is a subscriber, it SHOULD send a GOAWAY message to
downstream subscribers prior to any UNSUBSCRIBE messages to upstream
publishers.
After the client receives a GOAWAY, it's RECOMMENDED that the client
waits until there are no more Established subscriptions before
closing the session with NO_ERROR. Ideally this is transparent to
the application using MOQT, which involves establishing a new session
in the background and migrating Established subscriptions and
published namespaces. The client can choose to delay closing the
session if it expects more OBJECTs to be delivered. The server
closes the session with a GOAWAY_TIMEOUT if the client doesn't close
the session quickly enough.
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3.6. Congestion Control
MOQT does not specify a congestion controller, but there are
important attributes to consider when selecting a congestion
controller for use with an application built on top of MOQT.
3.6.1. Bufferbloat
Traditional AIMD congestion controllers (ex. CUBIC [RFC9438] and
Reno [RFC6582]) are prone to Bufferbloat. Bufferbloat occurs when
elements along the path build up a substantial queue of packets,
commonly more than doubling the round trip time. These queued
packets cause head-of-line blocking and latency, even when there is
no packet loss.
3.6.2. Application-Limited
The average bitrate for latency sensitive content needs to be less
than the available bandwidth, otherwise data will be queued and/or
dropped. As such, many MOQT applications will typically be limited
by the available data to send, and not the congestion controller.
Many congestion control algorithms only increase the congestion
window or bandwidth estimate if fully utilized. This combination can
lead to underestimating the available network bandwidth. As a
result, applications might need to periodically ensure the congestion
controller is not app-limited for at least a full round trip to
ensure the available bandwidth can be measured.
3.6.3. Consistent Throughput
Congestion control algorithms are commonly optimized for throughput,
not consistency. For example, BBR's PROBE_RTT state halves the
sending rate for more than a round trip in order to obtain an
accurate minimum RTT. Similarly, Reno halves it's congestion window
upon detecting loss. In both cases, the large reduction in sending
rate might cause issues with latency sensitive applications.
4. Modularity
MOQT defines all messages necessary to implement both simple
publishing or subscribing endpoints as well as highly functional
Relays. Non-Relay endpoints MAY implement only the subset of
functionality required to perform necessary tasks. For example, a
limited media player could operate using only SUBSCRIBE related
messages. Limited endpoints SHOULD respond to any unsupported
messages with the appropriate NOT_SUPPORTED error code, rather than
ignoring them.
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Relays MUST implement all MOQT messages defined in this document, as
well as processing rules described in Section 8.
5. Publishing and Retrieving Tracks
5.1. Subscriptions
All subscriptions begin in the Idle state. A subscription can be
initiated and moved to the Pending state by either a publisher or a
subscriber. A publisher initiates a subscription to a track by
sending the PUBLISH message. The subscriber either accepts or
rejects the subscription using PUBLISH_OK or REQUEST_ERROR. A
subscriber initiates a subscription to a track by sending the
SUBSCRIBE message. The publisher either accepts or rejects the
subscription using SUBSCRIBE_OK or REQUEST_ERROR. Once either of
these sequences is successful, the subscription moves to the
Established state and can be updated by the subscriber using
REQUEST_UPDATE. Either endpoint can terminate an Established
subscription, moving it to the Terminated state. The subscriber
terminates a subscription in the Pending (Subscriber) or Established
states using UNSUBSCRIBE, the publisher terminates a subscription in
the Pending (Publisher) or Established states using PUBLISH_DONE.
This diagram shows the subscription state machine:
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+--------+
| Idle |
+--------+
| |
SUBSCRIBE | | PUBLISH
(subscriber)| | (publisher)
V V
+--------------+ +--------------+
| Pending | | Pending |
+----| (Subscriber) | | (Publisher) |----+
| +--------------+ +--------------+ |
| | | |
REQUEST_ERROR | SUBSCRIBE_OK | | PUBLISH_OK | REQUEST_ERROR
(publisher) | (publisher)| | (subscriber) | (subscriber)
| V V |
| +-------------+ |
| | Established | ------+
| | | | REQUEST_UPDATE
| +-------------+ <-----+
| | | |
+---- UNSUBSCRIBE | | PUBLISH_DONE ----+
| (subscriber)| | (publisher) |
| V V |
| +-------------+ |
+----------->| Terminated | <------------+
+-------------+
A publisher MUST send exactly one SUBSCRIBE_OK or REQUEST_ERROR in
response to a SUBSCRIBE. A subscriber MUST send exactly one
PUBLISH_OK or REQUEST_ERROR in response to a PUBLISH. The peer
SHOULD close the session with a protocol error if it receives more
than one.
A publisher MUST save the Largest Location communicated in PUBLISH or
SUBSCRIBE_OK when establishing a subscription. This value can be
used in a Joining FETCH (see Section 9.16.2) at any time while the
subscription is active.
All Established subscriptions have a Forward State which is either 0
or 1. The publisher does not send Objects if the Forward State is 0,
and does send them if the Forward State is 1. The initiator of the
subscription sets the initial Forward State in either PUBLISH or
SUBSCRIBE. The subscriber can send PUBLISH_OK or REQUEST_UPDATE to
update the Forward State. Control messages, such as PUBLISH_DONE
(Section 9.15) are sent regardless of the forward state.
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Either endpoint can initiate a subscription to a track without
exchanging any prior messages other than SETUP. Relays MUST NOT send
any PUBLISH messages without knowing the client is interested in and
authorized to receive the content. The communication of intent and
authorization can be accomplished by the client sending
SUBSCRIBE_NAMESPACE, or conveyed in other mechanisms out of band.
An endpoint MAY SUBSCRIBE to a Track it is publishing, though only
Relays are required to handle such a SUBSCRIBE. Such self-
subscriptions are identical to subscriptions initiated by other
endpoints, and all published Objects will be forwarded back to the
endpoint, subject to priority and congestion response rules.
For a given Track, an endpoint can have at most one subscription to a
Track acting as the publisher and at most one acting as a subscriber.
If an endpoint receives a message attempting to establish a second
subscription to a Track with the same role, it MUST fail that request
with a DUPLICATE_SUBSCRIPTION error.
If a publisher receives a SUBSCRIBE request for a Track with an
existing subscription in Pending (publisher) state, it MUST fail that
request with a DUPLICATE_SUBSCRIPTION error. If a subscriber
receives a PUBLISH for a Track with a subscription in the Pending
(Subscriber) state, it MUST ensure the subscription it initiated
transitions to the Terminated state before sending PUBLISH_OK.
A publisher SHOULD begin sending incomplete objects when available to
avoid incurring additional latency.
Publishers MAY start sending Objects on PUBLISH-initiated
subscriptions before receiving a PUBLISH_OK response to reduce
latency. Doing so can consume unnecessary resources in cases where
the Subscriber rejects the subscription with REQUEST_ERROR or sets
Forward State=0 in PUBLISH_OK. It can also result in the Subscriber
dropping Objects if its buffering limits are exceeded (see
Section 10.3 and Section 10.4.2).
5.1.1. Subscription State Management
A subscriber keeps subscription state until it sends UNSUBSCRIBE, or
after receipt of a PUBLISH_DONE or REQUEST_ERROR. Note that
PUBLISH_DONE does not usually indicate that state can immediately be
destroyed, see Section 9.15.
The Publisher can destroy subscription state as soon as it has
received UNSUBSCRIBE. It MUST reset any open streams associated with
the SUBSCRIBE.
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The Publisher can also immediately delete subscription state after
sending PUBLISH_DONE, but MUST NOT send it until it has closed all
related streams.
A REQUEST_ERROR indicates no objects will be delivered, and both
endpoints can immediately destroy relevant state. Objects MUST NOT
be sent for requests that end with an error.
5.1.2. Subscription Filters
Subscribers can specify a filter on a subscription indicating to the
publisher which Objects to send. Subscriptions without a filter pass
all Objects published or received via upstream subscriptions.
All filters have a Start Location and an optional End Group. Only
objects published or received via a subscription having Locations
greater than or equal to Start Location and strictly less than or
equal to the End Group (when present) pass the filter.
Some filters are defined to be relative to the Largest Object. The
Largest Object is the Object with the largest Location
(Section 1.4.1) in the Track from the perspective of the publisher
processing the message. Largest Object updates when the first byte
of an Object with a Location larger than the previous value is
published or received through a subscription.
A Subscription Filter has the following structure:
Subscription Filter {
Filter Type (i),
[Start Location (Location),]
[End Group (i),]
}
Filter Type can have one of the following values:
Largest Object (0x2): The filter Start Location is {Largest
Object.Group, Largest Object.Object + 1} and Largest Object is
communicated in SUBSCRIBE_OK. If no content has been delivered yet,
the filter Start Location is {0, 0}. There is no End Group - the
subscription is open ended. Note that due to network reordering or
prioritization, relays can receive Objects with Locations smaller
than Largest Object after the SUBSCRIBE is processed, but these
Objects do not pass the Largest Object filter.
Next Group Start (0x1): The filter Start Location is {Largest
Object.Group + 1, 0} and Largest Object is communicated in
SUBSCRIBE_OK. If no content has been delivered yet, the filter Start
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Location is {0, 0}. There is no End Group - the subscription is open
ended. For scenarios where the subscriber intends to start from more
than one group in the future, it can use an AbsoluteStart filter
instead.
AbsoluteStart (0x3): The filter Start Location is specified
explicitly. The specified Start Location MAY be less than the
Largest Object observed at the publisher. There is no End Group -
the subscription is open ended. An AbsoluteStart filter with Start =
{0, 0} is equivalent to an unfiltered subscription.
AbsoluteRange (0x4): The filter Start Location and End Group are
specified explicitly. The specified Start Location MAY be less than
the Largest Object observed at the publisher. If the specified End
Group is the same group specified in Start Location, the remainder of
that Group passes the filter. End Group MUST specify the same or a
larger Group than specified in Start Location.
An endpoint that receives a filter type other than the above MUST
close the session with PROTOCOL_VIOLATION.
5.1.3. Joining an Ongoing Track
The MOQT Object model is designed with the concept that the beginning
of a Group is a join point, so in order for a subscriber to join a
Track, it needs to request an existing Group or wait for a future
Group. Different applications will have different approaches for
when to begin a new Group.
To join a Track at a past Group, the subscriber sends a SUBSCRIBE
with Filter Type Largest Object followed by a Joining FETCH (see
Section 9.16.2) for the intended start Group, which can be relative.
To join a Track at the next Group, the subscriber sends a SUBSCRIBE
with Filter Type Next Group Start.
5.1.3.1. Dynamically Starting New Groups
While some publishers will deterministically create new Groups, other
applications might want to only begin a new Group when needed. A
subscriber joining a Track might detect that it is more efficient to
request the Original Publisher create a new group than issue a
Joining FETCH. Publishers indicate a Track supports dynamic group
creation using the DYNAMIC_GROUPS parameter (Section 11.1.1.3).
One possible subscriber pattern is to SUBSCRIBE to a Track using
Filter Type Largest Object and observe the Largest Location in the
response. If the Object ID is below the application's threshold, the
subscriber sends a FETCH for the beginning of the Group. If the
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Object ID is above the threshold and the Track supports dynamic
groups, the subscriber sends a REQUEST_UPDATE message with the
NEW_GROUP_REQUEST parameter equal to the Largest Location's Group,
plus one (see Section 9.2.2.9).
Another possible subscriber pattern is to send a SUBSCRIBE with
Filter Type Next Group Start and NEW_GROUP_REQUEST equal to 0. The
value of DYNAMIC_GROUPS in SUBSCRIBE_OK will indicate if the
publisher supports dynamic groups. A publisher that does will begin
the next group as soon as practical.
5.2. Fetch State Management
The publisher MUST send exactly one FETCH_OK or REQUEST_ERROR in
response to a FETCH.
A subscriber keeps FETCH state until it sends FETCH_CANCEL, receives
REQUEST_ERROR, or receives a FIN or RESET_STREAM for the FETCH data
stream. If the data stream is already open, it MAY send STOP_SENDING
for the data stream along with FETCH_CANCEL, but MUST send
FETCH_CANCEL.
The Publisher can destroy fetch state as soon as it has received a
FETCH_CANCEL. It MUST reset any open streams associated with the
FETCH. It can also destroy state after closing the FETCH data
stream.
It can destroy all FETCH state after closing the data stream with a
FIN.
A REQUEST_ERROR indicates that both endpoints can immediately destroy
state. Since a relay can start delivering FETCH Objects from cache
before determining the result of the request, some Objects could be
received even if the FETCH results in error.
6. Namespace Discovery
Discovery of MOQT servers is always done out-of-band. Namespace
discovery can be done in the context of an established MOQT session.
Given sufficient out of band information, it is valid for a
subscriber to send a SUBSCRIBE or FETCH message to a publisher
(including a relay) without any previous MOQT messages besides SETUP.
However, SUBSCRIBE_NAMESPACE, PUBLISH and PUBLISH_NAMESPACE messages
provide an in-band means of discovery of publishers for a namespace.
The syntax of these messages is described in Section 9.
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6.1. Subscribing to Namespaces
If the subscriber is aware of a namespace of interest, it can send
SUBSCRIBE_NAMESPACE to publishers/relays it has established a session
with. The recipient of this message will send any relevant
NAMESPACE, NAMESPACE_DONE or PUBLISH messages for that namespace, or
more specific part of that namespace. This includes echoing back
published Tracks and/or Track Namespaces under the
SUBSCRIBE_NAMESPACE prefix to the endpoint that sent them. If an
endpoint accepts its own PUBLISH, this behaves as self-subscription
described in Section 5.1.
The subscriber sends SUBSCRIBE_NAMESPACE on a new bidirectional
stream and the publisher MUST send a single REQUEST_OK or
REQUEST_ERROR as the first message on the bidirectional stream in
response to a SUBSCRIBE_NAMESPACE. The subscriber SHOULD close the
session with a protocol error if it detects receiving more than one.
The receiver of a REQUEST_OK or REQUEST_ERROR ought to forward the
result to the application, so the application can decide which other
publishers to contact, if any.
A SUBSCRIBE_NAMESPACE can be cancelled by closing the stream with
either a FIN or RESET_STREAM. Cancelling does not prohibit original
publishers from sending further PUBLISH_NAMESPACE or PUBLISH
messages, but relays MUST NOT send any further PUBLISH messages to a
client without knowing the client is interested in and authorized to
receive the content.
6.2. Publishing Namespaces
A publisher MAY send PUBLISH_NAMESPACE messages to any subscriber. A
PUBLISH_NAMESPACE indicates to the subscriber that the publisher has
tracks available in that namespace. A subscriber MAY send SUBSCRIBE
or FETCH for tracks in a namespace without having received a
PUBLISH_NAMESPACE for it.
If a publisher is authoritative for a given namespace, or is a relay
that has received an authorized PUBLISH_NAMESPACE for that namespace
from an upstream publisher, it MUST send a PUBLISH_NAMESPACE to any
subscriber that has subscribed via SUBSCRIBE_NAMESPACE for that
namespace, or a prefix of that namespace. A publisher MAY send the
PUBLISH_NAMESPACE to any other subscriber.
An endpoint SHOULD report the reception of a REQUEST_OK or
REQUEST_ERROR to the application to inform the search for additional
subscribers for a namespace, or to abandon the attempt to publish
under this namespace. This might be especially useful in upload or
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chat applications. A subscriber MUST send exactly one REQUEST_OK or
REQUEST_ERROR in response to a PUBLISH_NAMESPACE. The publisher
SHOULD close the session with a protocol error if it receives more
than one.
A PUBLISH_NAMESPACE_DONE message withdraws a previous
PUBLISH_NAMESPACE, although it is not a protocol error for the
subscriber to send a SUBSCRIBE or FETCH message for a track in a
namespace after receiving an PUBLISH_NAMESPACE_DONE.
A subscriber can send PUBLISH_NAMESPACE_CANCEL to revoke acceptance
of an PUBLISH_NAMESPACE, for example due to expiration of
authorization credentials. The message enables the publisher to
PUBLISH_NAMESPACE again with refreshed authorization, or discard
associated state. After receiving an PUBLISH_NAMESPACE_CANCEL, the
publisher does not send PUBLISH_NAMESPACE_DONE.
While PUBLISH_NAMESPACE indicates to relays how to connect publishers
and subscribers, it is not a full-fledged routing protocol and does
not protect against loops and other phenomena. In particular,
PUBLISH_NAMESPACE SHOULD NOT be used to find paths through richly
connected networks of relays.
A subscriber MAY send a SUBSCRIBE or FETCH for a track to any
publisher. If it has accepted a PUBLISH_NAMESPACE with a namespace
that exactly matches the namespace for that track, it SHOULD only
request it from the senders of those PUBLISH_NAMESPACE messages.
7. Priorities
MoQ priorities allow a subscriber and original publisher to influence
the transmission order of Objects within a session in the presence of
congestion.
7.1. Definitions
MOQT maintains priorities between different schedulable objects. A
schedulable object in MOQT is either:
1. The first or next Object in a Subgroup that is in response to a
subscription.
2. An Object with forwarding preference Datagram.
3. An Object in response to a FETCH where that Object is the next
Object in the response.
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An Object is not schedulable if it is known that no part of it can be
written due to underlying transport flow control limits.
A single subgroup or datagram has a single publisher priority.
Within a response to SUBSCRIBE, it can be useful to conceptualize
this process as scheduling subgroups or datagrams instead of
individual objects on them. FETCH responses however can contain
objects with different publisher priorities.
A priority numberis an unsigned integer with a value between 0 and
255. A lower priority number indicates higher priority; the highest
priority is 0.
Subscriber Priority is a priority number associated with an
individual request. It is specified in the SUBSCRIBE or FETCH
message, and can be updated via REQUEST_UPDATE message. The
subscriber priority of an individual schedulable object is the
subscriber priority of the request that caused that object to be
sent. When subscriber priority is changed, a best effort SHOULD be
made to apply the change to all objects that have not been scheduled,
but it is implementation dependent what happens to objects that have
already been scheduled.
Publisher Priority is a priority number associated with an individual
schedulable object. A default can be specified in the parameters of
PUBLISH, or SUBSCRIBE_OK. Publisher priority can also be specified
in a subgroup header or datagram (see Section 10).
Group Order is a property of an individual subscription. It can be
either 'Ascending' (groups with lower group ID are sent first), or
'Descending' (groups with higher group ID are sent first). The
subscriber optionally communicates its group order preference in the
SUBSCRIBE message; the publisher's preference is used if the
subscriber did not express one (by setting Group Order field to value
0x0). The group order of an existing subscription cannot be changed.
7.2. Scheduling Algorithm
When an MOQT publisher has multiple schedulable objects it can choose
between, the objects SHOULD be selected as follows:
1. If two objects have different subscriber priorities associated
with them, the one with *the highest subscriber priority* is
scheduled to be sent first.
2. If two objects have the same subscriber priority, but different
publisher priorities, the one with *the highest publisher
priority* is scheduled to be sent first.
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3. If two objects in response to the same request have the same
subscriber and publisher priority, but belong to two different
groups of the same track, *the group order* of the associated
subscription is used to decide the one that is scheduled to be
sent first.
4. If two objects in response to the same request have the same
subscriber and publisher priority and belong to the same group of
the same track, the one with *the lowest Subgroup ID* (for
objects with forwarding preference Subgroup), or *the lowest
Object ID* (for objects with forwarding preference Datagram) is
scheduled to be sent first. If the two objects have different
Forwarding Preferences the order is implementation dependent.
The definition of "scheduled to be sent first" in the algorithm is
implementation dependent and is constrained by the prioritization
interface of the underlying transport. For some implementations, it
could mean that the object is serialized and passed to the underlying
transport first. Other implementations can control the order packets
are initially transmitted.
This algorithm does not provide a well-defined ordering for objects
that belong to different subscriptions or FETCH responses, but have
the same subscriber and publisher priority. The ordering in those
cases is implementation-defined, though the expectation is that all
subscriptions will be able to send some data.
A publisher might not utilize the entire available congestion window,
session flow control, or all available streams for lower priority
Objects if it expects higher priority Objects will be available to
send in the near future or it wants to reserve some bandwidth for
control messages.
Given the critical nature of control messages and their relatively
small size, the control stream SHOULD be prioritized higher than all
subscribed Objects.
7.3. Considerations for Setting Priorities
For downstream subscriptions, relays SHOULD respect the subscriber
and original publisher's priorities. Relays can receive
subscriptions with conflicting subscriber priorities or Group Order
preferences. Relays SHOULD NOT directly use Subscriber Priority or
Group Order from incoming subscriptions for upstream subscriptions.
Relays' use of these fields for upstream subscriptions can be based
on factors specific to it, such as the popularity of the content or
policy, or relays can specify the same value for all upstream
subscriptions.
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MoQ Sessions can span multiple namespaces, and priorities might not
be coordinated across namespaces. The subscriber's priority is
considered first, so there is a mechanism for a subscriber to fix
incompatibilities between different namespaces prioritization
schemes. Additionally, it is anticipated that when multiple
namespaces are present within a session, the namespaces could be
coordinating, possibly part of the same application. In cases when
pooling among namespaces is expected to cause issues, multiple MoQ
sessions, either within a single connection or on multiple
connections can be used.
Implementations that have a default priority SHOULD set it to a value
in the middle of the range (eg: 128) to allow non-default priorities
to be set either higher or lower.
8. Relays
Relays are leveraged to enable distribution scale in the MoQ
architecture. Relays can be used to form an overlay delivery
network, similar in functionality to Content Delivery Networks
(CDNs). Additionally, relays serve as policy enforcement points by
validating subscribe and publish requests at the edge of a network.
Relays are endpoints, which means they terminate Transport Sessions
in order to have visibility of MoQ Object metadata.
8.1. Caching Relays
Relays MAY cache Objects, but are not required to.
A caching relay saves Objects to its cache identified by the Object's
Full Track Name, Group ID and Object ID. If multiple objects are
received with the same Full Track Name, Group ID and Object ID,
Relays MAY ignore subsequently received Objects or MAY use them to
update certain cached fields. Implementations that update the cache
need to protect against cache poisoning. The only Object fields that
can be updated are the following:
1. Object can transition from existing to not existing in cases
where the object is no longer available.
2. Object Extension Headers can be added, removed or updated,
subject to the constraints of the specific header extension.
An endpoint that receives a duplicate Object with a different
Forwarding Preference, Subgroup ID, Priority or Payload MUST treat
the track as Malformed.
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For ranges of objects that do not exist, relays MAY change the
representation of a missing range to a semantically equivalent one.
For instance, a relay may change an End-of-Group="Y" Subgroup Header
to an equivalent object with an End of Group status, or a Prior Group
ID Gap extension could be removed in FETCH, where it's redundant.
Note that due to reordering, an implementation can receive an Object
after receiving an indication that the Object in question does not
exist. The endpoint SHOULD NOT cache or forward the object in this
case.
A cache MUST store all properties of an Object defined in
Section 10.2.1, with the exception of any extensions
(Section 10.2.1.2) that specify otherwise.
8.2. Forward Handling
Relays SHOULD set the Forward flag to 1 when a new subscription needs
to be sent upstream, regardless of the value of the Forward field
from the downstream subscription. Subscriptions that are not
forwarded consume resources from the publisher, so a publisher might
deprioritize, reject, or close those subscriptions to ensure other
subscriptions can be delivered.
8.3. Multiple Publishers
A Relay can receive PUBLISH_NAMESPACE for the same Track Namespace or
PUBLISH messages for the same Track from multiple publishers. The
following sections explain how Relays maintain subscriptions to all
available publishers for a given Track.
There is no specified limit to the number of publishers of a Track
Namespace or Track. An implementation can use mechanisms such as
REQUEST_ERROR, UNSUBSCRIBE or PUBLISH_NAMESPACE_CANCEL if it cannot
accept an additional publisher due to implementation constraints.
Implementations can consider the establishment or idle time of the
session or subscription to determine which publisher to reject or
disconnect.
Relays MUST handle Objects for the same Track from multiple
publishers and forward them to matching Established subscriptions.
The Relay SHOULD attempt to deduplicate Objects before forwarding,
subject to implementation constraints.
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8.4. Subscriber Interactions
Subscribers request Tracks by sending a SUBSCRIBE (see Section 9.9)
or FETCH (see Section 9.16) control message for each Track of
interest. Relays MUST ensure subscribers are authorized to access
the content associated with the Track. The authorization information
can be part of request itself or part of the encompassing session.
The specifics of how a relay authorizes a user are outside the scope
of this specification.
The relay MUST have an Established upstream subscription before
sending SUBSCRIBE_OK in response to a downstream SUBSCRIBE. If a
relay does not have sufficient information to send a FETCH_OK
immediately in response to a FETCH, it MUST withhold sending FETCH_OK
until it does.
Publishers maintain a list of Established downstream subscriptions
for each Track. Relays use the Track Alias (Section 10.1) of an
incoming Object to identify its Track and find the current
subscribers. Each new Object belonging to the Track is forwarded to
each subscriber, as allowed by the subscription's filter (see
Section 9.9), and delivered according to the priority (see Section 7)
and delivery timeout (see Section 9.2.2.2).
A relay MUST NOT reorder or drop objects received on a multi-object
stream when forwarding to subscribers, unless it has application
specific information.
Relays MAY aggregate authorized subscriptions for a given Track when
multiple subscribers request the same Track. Subscription
aggregation allows relays to make only a single upstream subscription
for the Track. The published content received from the upstream
subscription request is cached and shared among the pending
subscribers. Because MOQT restricts widening a subscription, relays
that aggregate upstream subscriptions can subscribe using the Largest
Object filter to avoid churn as downstream subscribers with disparate
filters subscribe and unsubscribe from a Track.
A subscriber remains subscribed to a Track at a Relay until it
unsubscribes, the upstream publisher terminates the subscription, or
the subscription expires (see Section 9.10). A subscription with a
filter can reach a state where all possible Objects matching the
filter have been delivered to the subscriber. Since tracking this
can be prohibitively expensive, Relays are not required or expected
to do so.
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8.4.1. Graceful Subscriber Relay Switchover
This section describes a behavior that a Subscriber MAY implement to
improve user experience when a relay sends a GOAWAY or the Subscriber
switches between networks, such as WiFi to Cellular, and QUIC
Connection Migration is not possible.
When a subscriber receives the GOAWAY message, it starts the process
of connecting to a new relay and sending the SUBSCRIBE requests for
all Established subscriptions to the new relay. The new relay will
send a response to the subscribes and if they are successful, the
subscriptions to the old relay can be stopped with an UNSUBSCRIBE.
8.5. Publisher Interactions
There are two ways to publish through a relay:
1. Send a PUBLISH message for a specific Track to the relay. The
relay MAY respond with PUBLISH_OK in Forward State=0 until there
are known subscribers for new Tracks.
2. Send a PUBLISH_NAMESPACE message for a Track Namespace to the
relay. This enables the relay to send SUBSCRIBE or FETCH
messages to publishers for Tracks in this Namespace in response
to requests received from subscribers.
Relays MUST verify that publishers are authorized to publish the set
of Tracks whose Track Namespace matches the namespace in a
PUBLISH_NAMESPACE, or the Full Track Name in PUBLISH. Relays MUST
NOT assume that an authorized publisher of a single Track is
implicitly authorized to publish any other Tracks or Track
Namespaces. If a Publisher would like Subscriptions in a Namespace
routed to it, it MUST send an explicit PUBLISH_NAMESPACE. The
authorization and identification of the publisher depends on the way
the relay is managed and is application specific.
When a publisher wants to stop new subscriptions for a published
namespace it sends a PUBLISH_NAMESPACE_DONE. A subscriber indicates
it will no longer subcribe to Tracks in a namespace it previously
responded REQUEST_OK to by sending a PUBLISH_NAMESPACE_CANCEL.
A Relay connects publishers and subscribers by managing sessions
based on the Track Namespace or Full Track Name. When a SUBSCRIBE
message is sent, its Full Track Name is matched exactly against
existing upstream subscriptions.
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Namespace Prefix Matching is further used to decide which publishers
receive a SUBSCRIBE and which subscribers receive a PUBLISH. In this
process, the fields in the Track Namespace are matched sequentially,
requiring an exact match for each field. If the published or
subscribed Track Namespace has the same or fewer fields than the
Track Namespace in the message, it qualifies as a match.
For example: A SUBSCRIBE message with namespace=(foo, bar) and name=x
will match sessions that sent PUBLISH_NAMESPACE messages with
namespace=(foo) or namespace=(foo, bar). It will not match a session
with namespace=(foobar).
Relays MUST send SUBSCRIBE messages to all matching publishers. This
includes matching both Established subscriptions on the Full Track
Name and Namespace Prefix Matching against published Namespaces.
Relays MUST forward PUBLISH_NAMESPACE or PUBLISH messages to all
matching subscribers.
When a Relay needs to make an upstream FETCH request, it determines
the available publishers using the same matching rules as SUBSCRIBE.
When more than one publisher is available, the Relay MAY send the
FETCH to any of them.
When a Relay receives an authorized SUBSCRIBE for a Track with one or
more Established upstream subscriptions, it MUST reply with
SUBSCRIBE_OK. If the SUBSCRIBE has Forward State=1 and the upstream
subscriptions are in Forward State=0, the Relay MUST send
REQUEST_UPDATE with Forward=1 to all publishers. If there are no
Established upstream subscriptions for the requested Track, the Relay
MUST send a SUBSCRIBE request to each publisher that has published
the subscription's namespace or prefix thereof. If the SUBSCRIBE has
Forward=1, then the Relay MUST use Forward=1 when subscribing
upstream.
When a relay receives an incoming PUBLISH message, it MUST send a
PUBLISH request to each subscriber that has subscribed (via
SUBSCRIBE_NAMESPACE) to the Track's namespace or prefix thereof.
When a relay receives an authorized PUBLISH_NAMESPACE for a namespace
that matches one or more existing subscriptions to other upstream
sessions, it MUST send a SUBSCRIBE to the publisher that sent the
PUBLISH_NAMESPACE for each matching subscription. When it receives
an authorized PUBLISH message for a Track that has Established
downstream subscriptions, it MUST respond with PUBLISH_OK. If at
least one downstream subscriber for the Track has Forward State=1,
the Relay MUST use Forward State=1 in the reply.
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If a Session is closed due to an unknown or invalid control message
or Object, the Relay MUST NOT propagate that message or Object to
another Session, because it would enable a single Session error to
force an unrelated Session, which might be handling other
subscriptions, to be closed.
8.5.1. Graceful Publisher Relay Switchover
This section describes a behavior that a publisher MAY implement to
improve user experience when a relay sends a GOAWAY or the publisher
switches between networks, such as WiFi to Cellular, and QUIC
Connection Migration is not possible.
A new Session is established, to a new URI if specified in a GOAWAY.
The publisher sends PUBLISH_NAMESPACE and/or PUBLISH messages to
begin publishing on the new Session, but it does not immediately stop
publishing Objects on the old Session.
Once the subscriptions have migrated over to the new session, the
publisher can stop publishing Objects on the old session. The relay
will attempt to deduplicate Objects received on both subscriptions.
Ideally, the subscriptions downstream from the relay do not observe
this change, and keep receiving the Objects on the same subscription.
8.6. Relay Track Handling
A relay MUST include all Extension Headers associated with a Track
when sending any PUBLISH, SUBSCRIBE_OK, REQUEST_OK when in response
to a TRACK_STATUS, or FETCH_OK, unless allowed by the extension's
specification (see Section 2.5).
8.7. Relay Object Handling
MOQT encodes the delivery information via Object headers
(Section 10.2). A relay MUST NOT modify Object properties when
forwarding, except for Object Extension Headers as specified in
Section 2.5.
A relay MUST treat the object payload as opaque. A relay MUST NOT
combine, split, or otherwise modify object payloads. A relay SHOULD
prioritize sending Objects based on Section 7.
9. Control Messages
MOQT uses a single bidirectional stream to exchange control messages,
as defined in Section 3.3. Every single message on the control
stream is formatted as follows:
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MOQT Control Message {
Message Type (i),
Message Length (16),
Message Payload (..),
}
Figure 3: MOQT Control Message
The following Message Types are defined:
+======+============================================+
| ID | Messages |
+======+============================================+
| 0x01 | RESERVED (SETUP for version 00) |
+------+--------------------------------------------+
| 0x40 | RESERVED (CLIENT_SETUP for versions <= 10) |
+------+--------------------------------------------+
| 0x41 | RESERVED (SERVER_SETUP for versions <= 10) |
+------+--------------------------------------------+
| 0x20 | CLIENT_SETUP (Section 9.3) |
+------+--------------------------------------------+
| 0x21 | SERVER_SETUP (Section 9.3) |
+------+--------------------------------------------+
| 0x10 | GOAWAY (Section 9.4) |
+------+--------------------------------------------+
| 0x15 | MAX_REQUEST_ID (Section 9.5) |
+------+--------------------------------------------+
| 0x1A | REQUESTS_BLOCKED (Section 9.6) |
+------+--------------------------------------------+
| 0x7 | REQUEST_OK (Section 9.7) |
+------+--------------------------------------------+
| 0x5 | REQUEST_ERROR (Section 9.8) |
+------+--------------------------------------------+
| 0x3 | SUBSCRIBE (Section 9.9) |
+------+--------------------------------------------+
| 0x4 | SUBSCRIBE_OK (Section 9.10) |
+------+--------------------------------------------+
| 0x2 | REQUEST_UPDATE (Section 9.11) |
+------+--------------------------------------------+
| 0xA | UNSUBSCRIBE (Section 9.12) |
+------+--------------------------------------------+
| 0x1D | PUBLISH (Section 9.13) |
+------+--------------------------------------------+
| 0x1E | PUBLISH_OK (Section 9.14) |
+------+--------------------------------------------+
| 0xB | PUBLISH_DONE (Section 9.15) |
+------+--------------------------------------------+
| 0x16 | FETCH (Section 9.16) |
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+------+--------------------------------------------+
| 0x18 | FETCH_OK (Section 9.17) |
+------+--------------------------------------------+
| 0x17 | FETCH_CANCEL (Section 9.18) |
+------+--------------------------------------------+
| 0xD | TRACK_STATUS (Section 9.19) |
+------+--------------------------------------------+
| 0x6 | PUBLISH_NAMESPACE (Section 9.20) |
+------+--------------------------------------------+
| 0x8 | NAMESPACE (Section 9.21) |
+------+--------------------------------------------+
| 0x9 | PUBLISH_NAMESPACE_DONE (Section 9.22) |
+------+--------------------------------------------+
| 0xE | NAMESPACE_DONE (Section 9.23) |
+------+--------------------------------------------+
| 0xC | PUBLISH_NAMESPACE_CANCEL (Section 9.24) |
+------+--------------------------------------------+
| 0x11 | SUBSCRIBE_NAMESPACE (Section 9.25) |
+------+--------------------------------------------+
Table 1
An endpoint that receives an unknown message type MUST close the
session. Control messages have a length to make parsing easier, but
no control messages are intended to be ignored. The length is set to
the number of bytes in Message Payload, which is defined by each
message type. If the length does not match the length of the Message
Payload, the receiver MUST close the session with a
PROTOCOL_VIOLATION.
9.1. Request ID
Most MOQT control messages contain a session specific Request ID.
The Request ID correlates requests and responses, allows endpoints to
update or terminate ongoing requests, and supports the endpoint's
ability to limit the concurrency and frequency of requests. Request
IDs for one endpoint increment independently from those sent by the
peer endpoint. The client's Request ID starts at 0 and are even and
the server's Request ID starts at 1 and are odd. The Request ID
increments by 2 with each FETCH, SUBSCRIBE, REQUEST_UPDATE,
SUBSCRIBE_NAMESPACE, PUBLISH, PUBLISH_NAMESPACE or TRACK_STATUS
request. Other messages with a Request ID field reference the
Request ID of another message for correlation. If an endpoint
receives a Request ID that is not valid for the peer, or a new
request with a Request ID that is not the next in sequence or exceeds
the received MAX_REQUEST_ID, it MUST close the session with
INVALID_REQUEST_ID.
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9.2. Parameters
Some messages include a Parameters field that encodes optional
message elements. Parameters in the CLIENT_SETUP and SERVER_SETUP
messages are called Setup Parameters. Parameters in other control
messages are Message Parameters. Receivers ignore unrecognized Setup
Parameters. All Message Parameters MUST be defined in the negotiated
version of MOQT or negotiated via Setup Parameters. An endpoint that
receives an unknown Message Parameter MUST close the session with
PROTOCOL_VIOLATION.
Senders MUST NOT repeat the same parameter type in a message unless
the parameter definition explicitly allows multiple instances of that
type to be sent in a single message. Receivers SHOULD check that
there are no unexpected duplicate parameters and close the session as
a PROTOCOL_VIOLATION if found. Receivers MUST allow duplicates of
unknown Setup Parameters.
The number of parameters in a message is not specifically limited,
but the total length of a control message is limited to 2^16-1 bytes.
Parameters are serialized as Key-Value-Pairs Figure 2.
Setup Parameters use a namespace that is constant across all MOQT
versions. All other messages use a version-specific namespace. For
example, the integer '1' can refer to different parameters for Setup
messages and for all other message types. SETUP message parameter
types are defined in Section 9.3.1. Version-specific parameter types
are defined in Section 9.2.2.
Message Parameters in SUBSCRIBE, PUBLISH_OK and FETCH MUST NOT cause
the publisher to alter the payload of the objects it sends, as that
would violate the track uniqueness guarantee described in
Section 2.4.3.
9.2.1. Parameter Scope
Message Parameters are always intended for the peer endpoint only and
are not forwarded by Relays, though relays can consider received
parameter values when making a request. Any Track metadata sent by
the publisher that is forwarded to subscribers is sent as Track
Extension header.
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9.2.2. Message Parameters
Each message parameter definition indicates the message types in
which it can appear. If it appears in some other type of message, it
MUST be ignored. Note that since Setup parameters use a separate
namespace, it is impossible for these parameters to appear in Setup
messages.
9.2.2.1. AUTHORIZATION TOKEN Parameter
The AUTHORIZATION TOKEN parameter (Parameter Type 0x03) MAY appear in
a PUBLISH, SUBSCRIBE, REQUEST_UPDATE, SUBSCRIBE_NAMESPACE,
PUBLISH_NAMESPACE, TRACK_STATUS or FETCH message. This parameter
conveys information to authorize the sender to perform the operation
carrying the parameter.
The parameter value is a Token structure containing an optional
Session-specific Alias. The Alias allows the sender to reference a
previously transmitted Token Type and Token Value in future messages.
The Token structure is serialized as follows:
Token {
Alias Type (i),
[Token Alias (i),]
[Token Type (i),]
[Token Value (..)]
}
Figure 4: Token structure
* Alias Type - an integer defining both the serialization and the
processing behavior of the receiver. This Alias type has the
following code points:
DELETE (0x0): There is an Alias but no Type or Value. This Alias
and the Token Value it was previously associated with| MUST be
retired. Retiring removes them from the pool of actively
registered tokens.
REGISTER (0x1): There is an Alias, a Type and a Value. This Alias
MUST be associated with the Token Value for the duration of the
Session or it is deleted. This action is termed "registering" the
Token.
USE_ALIAS (0x2): There is an Alias but no Type or Value. Use the
Token Type and Value previously registered with this Alias.
USE_VALUE (0x3): There is no Alias and there is a Type and Value.
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Use the Token Value as provided. The Token Value may be discarded
after processing.
If a server receives Alias Type DELETE (0x0) or USE_ALIAS (0x2) in a
CLIENT_SETUP message, it MUST close the session with a
PROTOCOL_VIOLATION.
* Token Alias - a Session-specific integer identifier that
references a Token Value. There are separate Alias spaces for the
client and server (e.g.: they can each register Alias=1). Once a
Token Alias has been registered, it cannot be re-registered by the
same endpoint in the Session without first being deleted. Use of
the Token Alias is optional.
* Token Type - a numeric identifier for the type of Token payload
being transmitted. This type is defined by the IANA table "MOQT
Auth Token Type" (see Section 13). Type 0 is reserved to indicate
that the type is not defined in the table and is negotiated out-
of-band between client and receiver.
* Token Value - the payload of the Token. The contents and
serialization of this payload are defined by the Token Type.
If the Token structure cannot be decoded, the receiver MUST close the
Session with KEY_VALUE_FORMATTING_ERROR. The receiver of a message
attempting to register an Alias which is already registered MUST
close the Session with DUPLICATE_AUTH_TOKEN_ALIAS. The receiver of a
message referencing an Alias that is not currently registered MUST
reject the message with UNKNOWN_AUTH_TOKEN_ALIAS.
The receiver of a message containing a well-formed Token structure
but otherwise invalid AUTHORIZATION TOKEN parameter MUST reject that
message with an MALFORMED_AUTH_TOKEN error.
The receiver of a message carrying an AUTHORIZATION TOKEN with Alias
Type REGISTER that does not result in a Session error MUST register
the Token Alias, in the token cache, even if the message fails for
other reasons, including Unauthorized. This allows senders to
pipeline messages that refer to previously registered tokens without
potentially terminating the entire Session. A receiver MAY store an
error code (eg: UNAUTHORIZED or MALFORMED_AUTH_TOKEN) in place of the
Token Type and Token Alias if any future message referencing the
Token Alias will result in that error. However, it is important to
not store an error code for a token that might be valid in the future
or due to some other property becoming fulfilled which currently
isn't. The size of a registered cache entry includes the length of
the Token Value, regardless of whether it is stored.
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If a receiver detects that an authorization token has expired, it
MUST retain the registered Alias until it is deleted by the sender,
though it MAY discard other state associated with the token that is
no longer needed. Expiration does not affect the size occupied by a
token in the token cache. Any message that references the token with
Alias Type USE_ALIAS fails with EXPIRED_AUTH_TOKEN.
Using an Alias to refer to a previously registered Token Type and
Value is for efficiency only and has the same effect as if the Token
Type and Value was included directly. Retiring an Alias that was
previously used to authorize a message has no retroactive effect on
the original authorization, nor does it prevent that same Token Type
and Value from being re-registered.
Senders of tokens SHOULD only register tokens which they intend to
re-use during the Session and SHOULD retire previously registered
tokens once their utility has passed.
By registering a Token, the sender is requiring the receiver to store
the Token Alias and Token Value until they are deleted, or the
Session ends. The receiver can protect its resources by sending a
SETUP parameter defining the MAX_AUTH_TOKEN_CACHE_SIZE limit (see
Section 9.3.1.4) it is willing to accept. If a registration is
attempted which would cause this limit to be exceeded, the receiver
MUST termiate the Session with a AUTH_TOKEN_CACHE_OVERFLOW error.
The AUTHORIZATION TOKEN parameter MAY be repeated within a message as
long as the combination of Token Type and Token Value are unique
after resolving any aliases.
9.2.2.2. DELIVERY TIMEOUT Parameter
The DELIVERY TIMEOUT parameter (Parameter Type 0x02) MAY appear in a
PUBLISH_OK, SUBSCRIBE, or REQUEST_UPDATE message.
It is the duration in milliseconds the relay SHOULD continue to
attempt forwarding Objects after they have been received. The start
time for the timeout is based on when the Object Headers are
received, and does not depend upon the forwarding preference.
Objects with forwarding preference 'Datagram' are not retransmitted
when lost, so the Delivery Timeout only limits the amount of time
they can be queued before being sent. There is no explicit signal
that an Object was not sent because the delivery timeout was
exceeded.
DELIVERY_TIMEOUT, if present, MUST contain a value greater than 0.
If an endpoint receives a DELIVERY_TIMEOUT equal to 0 it MUST close
the session with PROTOCOL_VIOLATION.
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If both the subscriber specifies this parameter and the Track has a
DELIVERY_TIMEOUT extension, the endpoints use the min of the two
values for the subscription.
Publishers can, at their discretion, discontinue forwarding Objects
earlier than the negotiated DELIVERY TIMEOUT, subject to stream
closure and ordering constraints described in Section 10.4.3.
However, if neither the subscriber nor publisher specifies DELIVERY
TIMEOUT, all Objects in the track matching the subscription filter
are delivered as indicated by their Group Order and Priority. If a
subscriber fails to consume Objects at a sufficient rate, causing the
publisher to exceed its resource limits, the publisher MAY terminate
the subscription with error TOO_FAR_BEHIND.
If an object in a subgroup exceeds the delivery timeout, the
publisher MUST reset the underlying transport stream (see
Section 10.4.3) and SHOULD NOT attempt to open a new stream to
deliver additional Objects in that Subgroup.
This parameter is intended to be specific to a subscription, so it
SHOULD NOT be forwarded upstream by a relay that intends to serve
multiple subscriptions for the same track.
Publishers SHOULD consider whether the entire Object can likely be
successfully delivered within the timeout period before sending any
data for that Object, taking into account priorities, congestion
control, and any other relevant information.
9.2.2.3. SUBSCRIBER PRIORITY Parameter
The SUBSCRIBER_PRIORITY parameter (Parameter Type 0x20) MAY appear in
a SUBSCRIBE, FETCH, REQUEST_UPDATE (for a subscription or FETCH),
PUBLISH_OK message. It is an integer expressing the priority of a
subscription relative to other subscriptions and fetch responses in
the same session. Lower numbers get higher priority. See Section 7.
The range is restricted to 0-255. If a publisher receives a value
outside this range, it MUST close the session with
PROTOCOL_VIOLATION.
If omitted from SUBSCRIBE, PUBLISH_OK or FETCH, the publisher uses
the value 128.
9.2.2.4. GROUP ORDER Parameter
The GROUP_ORDER parameter (Parameter Type 0x22) MAY appear in a
SUBSCRIBE, PUBLISH_OK, or FETCH.
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It is an enum indicating how to prioritize Objects from different
groups within the same subscription (see Section 7), or how to order
Groups in a Fetch response (see Section 9.16.3). The allowed values
are Ascending (0x1) or Descending (0x2). If an endpoint receives a
value outside this range, it MUST close the session with
PROTOCOL_VIOLATION.
If omitted from SUBSCRIBE, the publisher's preference from the Track
is used. If omitted from FETCH, the receiver uses Ascending (0x1).
9.2.2.5. SUBSCRIPTION FILTER Parameter
The SUBSCRIPTION_FILTER parameter (Parameter Type 0x21) MAY appear in
a SUBSCRIBE, PUBLISH_OK or REQUEST_UPDATE (for a subscription)
message. It is a length-prefixed Subscription Filter (see
Section 5.1.2). If the length of the Subscription Filter does not
match the parameter length, the publisher MUST close the session with
PROTOCOL_VIOLATION.
If omitted from SUBSCRIBE or PUBLISH_OK, the subscription is
unfiltered. If omitted from REQUEST_UPDATE, the value is unchanged.
9.2.2.6. EXPIRES Parameter
The EXPIRES parameter (Parameter Type 0x8) MAY appear in
SUBSCRIBE_OK, PUBLISH or PUBLISH_OK (TODO: or REQUEST_OK). It is a
variable length integer encoding the time in milliseconds after which
the sender of the parameter will terminate the subscription. The
sender will terminate the subscription using PUBLISH_DONE or
UNSUBSCRIBE, depending on its role. This value is advisory and the
sender can terminate the subscription prior to or after the expiry
time.
The receiver of the parameter can extend the subscription by sending
a REQUEST_UPDATE. If the receiver of the parameter has one or more
updated AUTHORIZATION_TOKENs, it SHOULD include those in the
REQUEST_UPDATE. Relays that send this parameter and applications
that receive it MAY introduce jitter to prevent many endpoints from
updating simultaneously.
If the EXPIRES parameter is 0 or is not present in a message, the
subscription does not expire or expires at an unknown time.
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9.2.2.7. LARGEST OBJECT Parameter
The LARGEST_OBJECT parameter (Parameter Type 0x9) MAY appear in
SUBSCRIBE_OK, PUBLISH or in REQUEST_OK (in response to REQUEST_UPDATE
or TRACK_STATUS). It is a length-prefixed Location structure (see
Section 1.4.1) containing the largest Location in the Track observed
by the sending endpoint (see Section 5.1.2. If Objects have been
published on this Track the Publisher MUST include this parameter.
If omitted from a message, the sending endpoint has not published or
received any Objects in the Track.
9.2.2.8. FORWARD Parameter
The FORWARD parameter (Parameter Type 0x10) MAY appear in SUBSCRIBE,
REQUEST_UPDATE (for a subscription), PUBLISH, PUBLISH_OK and
SUBSCRIBE_NAMESPACE. It is a variable length integer specifying the
Forwarding State on affected subscriptions (see Section 5.1). The
allowed values are 0 (don't forward) or 1 (forward). If an endpoint
receives a value outside this range, it MUST close the session with
PROTOCOL_VIOLATION.
If the parameter is omitted from REQUEST_UPDATE, the value for the
subscription remains unchanged. If the parameter is omitted from any
other message, the default value is 1.
9.2.2.9. NEW GROUP REQUEST Parameter
The NEW_GROUP_REQUEST parameter (parameter type 0x32) MAY appear in
PUBLISH_OK, SUBSCRIBE or REQUEST_UPDATE for a subscription. It is an
integer representing the largest Group ID in the Track known by the
subscriber, plus 1. A value of 0 indicates that the subscriber has
no Group information for the Track. A subscriber MUST NOT send this
parameter in PUBLISH_OK or REQUEST_UPDATE if the Track did not
include the DYNAMIC_GROUPS Extension with value 1. A subscriber MAY
include this parameter in SUBSCRIBE without foreknowledge of support.
If the original publisher does not support dynamic Groups, it ignores
the parameter in that case.
When an Original Publisher that supports dynamic Groups receives a
NEW_GROUP_REQUEST with a value of 0 or a value larger than the
current Group, it SHOULD end the current Group and begin a new Group
as soon as practical. The Original Publisher MAY delay the
NEW_GROUP_REQUEST subject to implementation specific concerns, for
example, acheiving a minimum duration for each Group. The Original
Publisher chooses the next Group ID; there are no requirements that
it be equal to the NEW_GROUP_REQUEST parameter value.
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Relay Handling:
A relay that receives a NEW_GROUP_REQUEST for a Track without an
Established subscription MUST include the NEW_GROUP_REQUEST when
subscribing upstream.
A relay that receives a NEW_GROUP_REQUEST for an Established
subscription with a value of 0 or a value larger than the Largest
Group MUST send a REQUEST_UPDATE including the NEW_GROUP_REQUEST to
the publisher unless:
1. The Track does not support dynamic Groups
2. There is already an outstanding NEW_GROUP_REQUEST from this Relay
with a greater or equal value
If a relay receives a NEW_GROUP_REQUEST with a non-zero value less
than or equal to the Largest Group, it does not send a
NEW_GROUP_REQUEST upstream.
After sending a NEW_GROUP_REQUEST upstream, the request is considered
outstanding until the Largest Group increases.
9.3. CLIENT_SETUP and SERVER_SETUP
The CLIENT_SETUP and SERVER_SETUP messages are the first messages
exchanged by the client and the server; they allow the endpoints to
agree on the initial configuration before any control messsages are
exchanged. The messages contain a sequence of key-value pairs called
Setup parameters; the semantics and format of which can vary based on
whether the client or server is sending. To ensure future
extensibility of MOQT, endpoints MUST ignore unknown setup
parameters. TODO: describe GREASE for Setup Parameters.
The wire format of the Setup messages are as follows:
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CLIENT_SETUP Message {
Type (i) = 0x20,
Length (16),
Number of Parameters (i),
Setup Parameters (..) ...,
}
SERVER_SETUP Message {
Type (i) = 0x21,
Length (16),
Number of Parameters (i),
Setup Parameters (..) ...,
}
Figure 5: MOQT Setup Messages
The available Setup parameters are detailed in the next sections.
9.3.1. Setup Parameters
9.3.1.1. AUTHORITY
The AUTHORITY parameter (Parameter Type 0x05) allows the client to
specify the authority component of the MoQ URI when using native QUIC
([QUIC]). It MUST NOT be used by the server, or when WebTransport is
used. When an AUTHORITY parameter is received from a server, or when
an AUTHORITY parameter is received while WebTransport is used, or
when an AUTHORITY parameter is received by a server but the server
does not support the specified authority, the session MUST be closed
with INVALID_AUTHORITY.
The AUTHORITY parameter follows the URI formatting rules [RFC3986].
When connecting to a server using a URI with the "moqt" scheme, the
client MUST set the AUTHORITY parameter to the authority portion of
the URI. If an AUTHORITY parameter does not conform to these rules,
the session MUST be closed with MALFORMED_AUTHORITY.
9.3.1.2. PATH
The PATH parameter (Parameter Type 0x01) allows the client to specify
the path of the MoQ URI when using native QUIC ([QUIC]). It MUST NOT
be used by the server, or when WebTransport is used. When a PATH
parameter is received from a server, or when a PATH parameter is
received while WebTransport is used, or when a PATH parameter is
received by a server but the server does not support the specified
path, the session MUST be closed with INVALID_PATH.
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The PATH parameter follows the URI formatting rules [RFC3986]. When
connecting to a server using a URI with the "moqt" scheme, the client
MUST set the PATH parameter to the path-abempty portion of the URI;
if query is present, the client MUST concatenate ?, followed by the
query portion of the URI to the parameter. If a PATH does not
conform to these rules, the session MUST be closed with
MALFORMED_PATH.
9.3.1.3. MAX_REQUEST_ID
The MAX_REQUEST_ID parameter (Parameter Type 0x02) communicates an
initial value for the Maximum Request ID to the receiving endpoint.
The default value is 0, so if not specified, the peer MUST NOT send
requests.
9.3.1.4. MAX_AUTH_TOKEN_CACHE_SIZE
The MAX_AUTH_TOKEN_CACHE_SIZE parameter (Parameter Type 0x04)
communicates the maximum size in bytes of all actively registered
Authorization tokens that the endpoint is willing to store per
Session. This parameter is optional. The default value is 0 which
prohibits the use of token Aliases.
The token size is calculated as 16 bytes + the size of the Token
Value field (see Figure 4). The total size as restricted by the
MAX_AUTH_TOKEN_CACHE_SIZE parameter is calculated as the sum of the
token sizes for all registered tokens (Alias Type value of 0x01)
minus the sum of the token sizes for all deregistered tokens (Alias
Type value of 0x00), since Session initiation.
9.3.1.5. AUTHORIZATION TOKEN
The AUTHORIZATION TOKEN setup parameter (Parameter Type 0x03)) is
funcionally equivalient to the AUTHORIZATION TOKEN message parameter,
see Section 9.2.2.1. The endpoint can specify one or more tokens in
CLIENT_SETUP or SERVER_SETUP that the peer can use to authorize MOQT
session establishment.
If a server receives an AUTHORIZATION TOKEN parameter in CLIENT_SETUP
with Alias Type REGISTER that exceeds its MAX_AUTH_TOKEN_CACHE_SIZE,
it MUST NOT fail the session with AUTH_TOKEN_CACHE_OVERFLOW.
Instead, it MUST treat the parameter as Alias Type USE_VALUE. A
client MUST handle registration failures of this kind by purging any
Token Aliases that failed to register based on the
MAX_AUTH_TOKEN_CACHE_SIZE parameter in SERVER_SETUP (or the default
value of 0).
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9.3.1.6. MOQT IMPLEMENTATION
The MOQT_IMPLEMENTATION parameter (Parameter Type 0x07) identifies
the name and version of the sender's MOQT implementation. This
SHOULD be a UTF-8 encoded string [RFC3629], though the message does
not carry information, such as language tags, that would aid
comprehension by any entity other than the one that created the text.
9.4. GOAWAY
An endpoint sends a GOAWAY message to inform the peer it intends to
close the session soon. Servers can use GOAWAY to initiate session
migration (Section 3.5) with an optional URI.
The GOAWAY message does not impact subscription state. A subscriber
SHOULD individually UNSUBSCRIBE for each existing subscription, while
a publisher MAY reject new requests after sending a GOAWAY.
Upon receiving a GOAWAY, an endpoint SHOULD NOT initiate new requests
to the peer including SUBSCRIBE, PUBLISH, FETCH, PUBLISH_NAMESPACE,
SUBSCRIBE_NAMESPACE and TRACK_STATUS.
Sending a GOAWAY does not prevent the sender from initiating new
requests, though the sender SHOULD avoid initiating requests unless
required by migration (see (Section 8.4.1 and Section 8.5.1). An
endpoint that receives a GOAWAY MAY reject new requests with an
appropriate error code (e.g., SUBSCRIBE_ERROR with error code
GOING_AWAY).
The endpoint MUST close the session with a PROTOCOL_VIOLATION
(Section 3.4) if it receives multiple GOAWAY messages.
GOAWAY Message {
Type (i) = 0x10,
Length (16),
New Session URI Length (i),
New Session URI (..),
}
Figure 6: MOQT GOAWAY Message
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* New Session URI: When received by a client, indicates where the
client can connect to continue this session. The client MUST use
this URI for the new session if provided. If the URI is zero
bytes long, the current URI is reused instead. The new session
URI SHOULD use the same scheme as the current URI to ensure
compatibility. The maxmimum length of the New Session URI is
8,192 bytes. If an endpoint receives a length exceeding the
maximum, it MUST close the session with a PROTOCOL_VIOLATION.
If a server receives a GOAWAY with a non-zero New Session URI
Length it MUST close the session with a PROTOCOL_VIOLATION.
9.5. MAX_REQUEST_ID
An endpoint sends a MAX_REQUEST_ID message to increase the number of
requests the peer can send within a session.
The Maximum Request ID MUST only increase within a session. If an
endpoint receives MAX_REQUEST_ID message with an equal or smaller
Request ID it MUST close the session with a PROTOCOL_VIOLATION.
MAX_REQUEST_ID Message {
Type (i) = 0x15,
Length (16),
Max Request ID (i),
}
Figure 7: MOQT MAX_REQUEST_ID Message
* Max Request ID: The new Maximum Request ID for the session plus 1.
If a Request ID equal to or larger than this is received by the
endpoint that sent the MAX_REQUEST_ID in any request message
(PUBLISH_NAMESPACE, FETCH, SUBSCRIBE, SUBSCRIBE_NAMESPACE,
REQUEST_UPDATE or TRACK_STATUS), the endpoint MUST close the
session with an error of TOO_MANY_REQUESTS.
MAX_REQUEST_ID is similar to MAX_STREAMS in ([RFC9000], Section 4.6),
and similar considerations apply when deciding how often to send
MAX_REQUEST_ID. For example, implementations might choose to
increase MAX_REQUEST_ID as subscriptions are closed to keep the
number of available subscriptions roughly consistent.
9.6. REQUESTS_BLOCKED
The REQUESTS_BLOCKED message is sent when an endpoint would like to
send a new request, but cannot because the Request ID would exceed
the Maximum Request ID value sent by the peer. The endpoint SHOULD
send only one REQUESTS_BLOCKED for a given Maximum Request ID.
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An endpoint MAY send a MAX_REQUEST_ID upon receipt of
REQUESTS_BLOCKED, but it MUST NOT rely on REQUESTS_BLOCKED to trigger
sending a MAX_REQUEST_ID, because sending REQUESTS_BLOCKED is not
required.
REQUESTS_BLOCKED Message {
Type (i) = 0x1A,
Length (16),
Maximum Request ID (i),
}
Figure 8: MOQT REQUESTS_BLOCKED Message
* Maximum Request ID: The Maximum Request ID for the session on
which the endpoint is blocked. More on Request ID in Section 9.1.
9.7. REQUEST_OK
The REQUEST_OK message is sent to a response to REQUEST_UPDATE,
TRACK_STATUS, SUBSCRIBE_NAMESPACE and PUBLISH_NAMESPACE requests.
The unique request ID in the REQUEST_OK is used to associate it with
the correct type of request.
REQUEST_OK Message {
Type (i) = 0x7,
Length (16),
Request ID (i),
Number of Parameters (i),
Parameters (..) ...
}
Figure 9: MOQT REQUEST_OK Message
* Request ID: The Request ID to which this message is replying.
* Parameters: The parameters are defined in Section 9.2.2.
9.8. REQUEST_ERROR
The REQUEST_ERROR message is sent to a response to any request
(SUBSCRIBE, FETCH, PUBLISH, SUBSCRIBE_NAMESPACE, PUBLISH_NAMESPACE,
TRACK_STATUS). The unique request ID in the REQUEST_ERROR is used to
associate it with the correct type of request.
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REQUEST_ERROR Message {
Type (i) = 0x5,
Length (16),
Request ID (i),
Error Code (i),
Retry Interval (i),
Error Reason (Reason Phrase),
}
Figure 10: MOQT REQUEST_ERROR Message
* Request ID: The Request ID to which this message is replying.
* Error Code: Identifies an integer error code for request failure.
* Retry Interval: The minimum time (in milliseconds) before the
request SHOULD be sent again, plus one. If the value is 0, the
request SHOULD NOT be retried.
* Error Reason: Provides a text description of the request error.
See Section 1.4.3.
The application SHOULD use a relevant error code in REQUEST_ERROR, as
defined below and assigned in Section 13.4.2. Most codepoints have
identical meanings for various request types, but some have request-
specific meanings.
If a request is retryable with the same parameters at a later time,
the sender of REQUEST_ERROR includes a non-zero Retry Interval in the
message. To minimize the risk of synchronized retry storms, the
sender can apply randomization to each retry interval so that retries
are spread out over time. A Retry Interval value of 1 indicates the
request can be retried immediately.
INTERNAL_ERROR: An implementation specific or generic error
occurred.
UNAUTHORIZED: The subscriber is not authorized to perform the
requested action on the given track. This might be retryable if
the authorization token is not yet valid.
TIMEOUT: The subscription could not be completed before an
implementation specific timeout. For example, a relay could not
establish an upstream subscription within the timeout.
NOT_SUPPORTED: The endpoint does not support the type of request.
MALFORMED_AUTH_TOKEN: Invalid Auth Token serialization during
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registration (see Section 9.2.2.1).
EXPIRED_AUTH_TOKEN: Authorization token has expired
(Section 9.2.2.1).
DUPLICATE_SUBSCRIPTION (0x19): The PUBLISH or SUBSCRIBE request
attempted to create a subscription to a Track with the same role
as an existing subscription.
Below are errors for use by the publisher. They can appear in
response to SUBSCRIBE, FETCH, TRACK_STATUS, and SUBSCRIBE_NAMESPACE,
unless otherwise noted.
DOES_NOT_EXIST: The track or namespace is not available at the
publisher.
INVALID_RANGE: In response to SUBSCRIBE or FETCH, specified Filter
or range of Locations cannot be satisfied.
MALFORMED_TRACK: In response to a FETCH, a relay publisher detected
the track was malformed (see Section 2.4.2).
The following are errors for use by the subscriber. They can appear
in response to PUBLISH or PUBLISH_NAMESPACE, unless otherwise noted.
UNINTERESTED: The subscriber is not interested in the track or
namespace.
Errors below can only be used in response to one message type.
PREFIX_OVERLAP: In response to SUBSCRIBE_NAMESPACE, the namespace
prefix overlaps with another SUBSCRIBE_NAMESPACE in the same
session.
INVALID_JOINING_REQUEST_ID: In response to a Joining FETCH, the
referenced Request ID is not an Established Subscription.
9.9. SUBSCRIBE
A subscription causes the publisher to send newly published objects
for a track.
Subscribe only requests newly published or received Objects. Objects
from the past are retrieved using FETCH (Section 9.16).
The format of SUBSCRIBE is as follows:
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SUBSCRIBE Message {
Type (i) = 0x3,
Length (16),
Request ID (i),
Track Namespace (..),
Track Name Length (i),
Track Name (..),
Number of Parameters (i),
Parameters (..) ...
}
Figure 11: MOQT SUBSCRIBE Message
* Request ID: See Section 9.1.
* Track Namespace: Identifies the namespace of the track as defined
in (Section 2.4.1).
* Track Name: Identifies the track name as defined in
(Section 2.4.1).
* Parameters: The parameters are defined in Section 9.2.2.
On successful subscription, the publisher MUST reply with a
SUBSCRIBE_OK, allowing the subscriber to determine the start group/
object when not explicitly specified, and start sending objects.
If the publisher cannot satisfy the requested Subscription Filter
(see Section 9.2.2.5) or if the entire End Group has already been
published it SHOULD send a REQUEST_ERROR with code INVALID_RANGE. A
publisher MUST NOT send objects from outside the requested range.
Subscribing with the FORWARD parameter (Section 9.2.2.8) equal to 0
allows publisher or relay to prepare to serve the subscription in
advance, reducing the time to receive objects in the future.
9.10. SUBSCRIBE_OK
A publisher sends a SUBSCRIBE_OK control message for successful
subscriptions.
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SUBSCRIBE_OK Message {
Type (i) = 0x4,
Length (16),
Request ID (i),
Track Alias (i),
Number of Parameters (i),
Parameters (..) ...,
Track Extensions (..),
}
Figure 12: MOQT SUBSCRIBE_OK Message
* Request ID: The Request ID of the SUBSCRIBE this message is
replying to Section 9.9.
* Track Alias: The identifer used for this track in Subgroups or
Datagrams (see Section 10.1). The same Track Alias MUST NOT be
used to refer to two different Tracks simultaneously. If a
subscriber receives a SUBSCRIBE_OK that uses the same Track Alias
as a different track with an Established subscription, it MUST
close the session with error DUPLICATE_TRACK_ALIAS.
* Parameters: The parameters are defined in Section 9.2.2.
* Track Extensions : A sequence of Extension Headers. See
Section 2.5.
9.11. REQUEST_UPDATE
The sender of a request (SUBSCRIBE, PUBLISH, FETCH, TRACK_STATUS,
PUBLISH_NAMESPACE, SUBSCRIBE_NAMESPACE) can later send a
REQUEST_UPDATE to modify it. A subscriber can also send
REQUEST_UPDATE to modify parameters of a subscription established
with PUBLISH.
The receiver of a REQUEST_UPDATE MUST respond with exactly one
REQUEST_OK or REQUEST_ERROR message indicating if the update was
successful.
If a parameter previously set on the request is not present in
REQUEST_UPDATE, its value remains unchanged.
There is no mechanism to remove a parameter from a request.
The format of REQUEST_UPDATE is as follows:
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REQUEST_UPDATE Message {
Type (i) = 0x2,
Length (16),
Request ID (i),
Existing Request ID (i),
Number of Parameters (i),
Parameters (..) ...
}
Figure 13: MOQT REQUEST_UPDATE Message
* Request ID: See Section 9.1.
* Existing Request ID: The Request ID of the request this message is
updating. This MUST match the Request ID of an existing request.
The receiver MUST close the session with PROTOCOL_VIOLATION if the
sender specifies an invalid Existing Request ID, or if the
parameters included in the REQUEST_UPDATE are invalid for the type
of request being modified.
* Parameters: The parameters are defined in Section 9.2.2.
9.11.1. Updating Subscriptions
When a subscriber decreases the Start Location of the Subscription
Filter (see Section 5.1.2), the Start Location can be smaller than
the Track's Largest Location, similar to a new Subscription. FETCH
can be used to retrieve any necessary Objects smaller than the
current Largest Location.
When a subscriber increases the End Location, the Largest Object at
the publisher might already be larger than the previous End Location.
This will create a gap in the subscription. The REQUEST_OK in
response to the REQUEST_UPDATE will include the LARGEST_OBJECT
parameter, and the subscriber can issue a FETCH to retrieve the
omitted Objects, if any.
When a subscriber narrows their subscription (increase the Start
Location and/or decrease the End Group), it might still receive
Objects outside the new range if the publisher sent them before the
update was processed.
When a subscription update is unsuccessful, the publisher MUST also
terminate the subscription with PUBLISH_DONE with error code
UPDATE_FAILED.
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9.12. UNSUBSCRIBE
A Subscriber issues an UNSUBSCRIBE message to a Publisher indicating
it is no longer interested in receiving the specified Track,
indicating that the Publisher stop sending Objects as soon as
possible.
The format of UNSUBSCRIBE is as follows:
UNSUBSCRIBE Message {
Type (i) = 0xA,
Length (16),
Request ID (i)
}
Figure 14: MOQT UNSUBSCRIBE Message
* Request ID: The Request ID of the subscription that is being
terminated. See Section 9.9.
9.13. PUBLISH
The publisher sends the PUBLISH control message to initiate a
subscription to a track. The receiver verifies the publisher is
authorized to publish this track.
PUBLISH Message {
Type (i) = 0x1D,
Length (16),
Request ID (i),
Track Namespace (..),
Track Name Length (i),
Track Name (..),
Track Alias (i),
Number of Parameters (i),
Parameters (..) ...,
Track Extensions (..),
}
Figure 15: MOQT PUBLISH Message
* Request ID: See Section 9.1.
* Track Namespace: Identifies a track's namespace as defined in
(Section 2.4.1)
* Track Name: Identifies the track name as defined in
(Section 2.4.1).
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* Track Alias: The identifer used for this track in Subgroups or
Datagrams (see Section 10.1). The same Track Alias MUST NOT be
used to refer to two different Tracks simultaneously. If a
subscriber receives a PUBLISH that uses the same Track Alias as a
different track with an Established subscription, it MUST close
the session with error DUPLICATE_TRACK_ALIAS.
* Parameters: The parameters are defined in Section 9.2.2.
* Track Extensions : A sequence of Extension Headers. See
Section 2.5.
A subscriber receiving a PUBLISH for a Track it does not wish to
receive SHOULD send REQUEST_ERROR with error code UNINTERESTED, and
abandon reading any publisher initiated streams associated with that
subscription using a STOP_SENDING frame.
A publisher that sends the FORWARD parameter (Section 9.2.2.8) equal
to 0 indicates that it will not transmit any objects until the
subscriber sets the Forward State to 1. If the FORWARD parameter is
omitted or equal to 1, the publisher will start transmitting objects
immediately, possibly before PUBLISH_OK.
9.14. PUBLISH_OK
The subscriber sends a PUBLISH_OK control message to acknowledge the
successful authorization and acceptance of a PUBLISH message, and
establish a subscription.
PUBLISH_OK Message {
Type (i) = 0x1E,
Length (16),
Request ID (i),
Number of Parameters (i),
Parameters (..) ...,
}
Figure 16: MOQT PUBLISH_OK Message
* Request ID: The Request ID of the PUBLISH this message is replying
to Section 9.13.
* Parameters: The parameters are defined in Section 9.2.2.
TODO: A similar section to SUBSCRIBE about how the publisher handles
a filter that is entirely behind Largest Object or is otherwise
invalid.
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9.15. PUBLISH_DONE
A publisher sends a PUBLISH_DONE message to indicate it is done
publishing Objects for that subscription. The Status Code indicates
why the subscription ended, and whether it was an error. Because
PUBLISH_DONE is sent on the control stream, it is likely to arrive at
the receiver before late-arriving objects, and often even late-
opening streams. However, the receiver uses it as an indication that
it should receive any late-opening streams in a relatively short
time.
Note that some objects in the subscribed track might never be
delivered, because a stream was reset, or never opened in the first
place, due to the delivery timeout.
A sender MUST NOT send PUBLISH_DONE until it has closed all streams
it will ever open, and has no further datagrams to send, for a
subscription. After sending PUBLISH_DONE, the sender can immediately
destroy subscription state, although stream state can persist until
delivery completes. The sender might persist subscription state to
enforce the delivery timeout by resetting streams on which it has
already sent FIN, only deleting it when all such streams have
received ACK of the FIN.
A sender MUST NOT destroy subscription state until it sends
PUBLISH_DONE, though it can choose to stop sending objects (and thus
send PUBLISH_DONE) for any reason.
A subscriber that receives PUBLISH_DONE SHOULD set a timer of at
least its delivery timeout in case some objects are still inbound due
to prioritization or packet loss. The subscriber MAY dispense with a
timer if it sent UNSUBSCRIBE or is otherwise no longer interested in
objects from the track. Once the timer has expired, the receiver
destroys subscription state once all open streams for the
subscription have closed. A subscriber MAY discard subscription
state earlier, at the cost of potentially not delivering some late
objects to the application. The subscriber SHOULD send STOP_SENDING
on all streams related to the subscription when it deletes
subscription state.
The format of PUBLISH_DONE is as follows:
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PUBLISH_DONE Message {
Type (i) = 0xB,
Length (16),
Request ID (i),
Status Code (i),
Stream Count (i),
Error Reason (Reason Phrase)
}
Figure 17: MOQT PUBLISH_DONE Message
* Request ID: The Request ID of the subscription that is being
terminated. See Section 9.9.
* Status Code: An integer status code indicating why the
subscription ended.
* Stream Count: An integer indicating the number of data streams the
publisher opened for this subscription. This helps the subscriber
know if it has received all of the data published in this
subscription by comparing the number of streams received. The
subscriber can immediately remove all subscription state once the
same number of streams have been processed. If the track had only
Objects with Forwarding Preference = Datagram, the publisher MUST
set Stream Count to 0. If the publisher is unable to set Stream
Count to the exact number of streams opened for the subscription,
it MUST set Stream Count to 2^62 - 1. Subscribers SHOULD use a
timeout or other mechanism to remove subscription state in case
the publisher set an incorrect value, reset a stream before the
SUBGROUP_HEADER, or set the maximum value. If a subscriber
receives more streams for a subscription than specified in Stream
Count, it MAY close the session with a PROTOCOL_VIOLATION.
* Error Reason: Provides the reason for subscription error. See
Section 1.4.3.
The application SHOULD use a relevant status code in PUBLISH_DONE, as
defined below:
INTERNAL_ERROR (0x0): An implementation specific or generic error
occurred.
UNAUTHORIZED (0x1): The subscriber is no longer authorized to
subscribe to the given track.
TRACK_ENDED (0x2): The track is no longer being published.
SUBSCRIPTION_ENDED (0x3): The publisher reached the end of an
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associated subscription filter.
GOING_AWAY (0x4): The subscriber or publisher issued a GOAWAY
message.
EXPIRED (0x5): The publisher reached the timeout specified in
SUBSCRIBE_OK.
TOO_FAR_BEHIND (0x6): The publisher's queue of objects to be sent to
the given subscriber exceeds its implementation defined limit.
MALFORMED_TRACK (0x12): A relay publisher detected that the track
was malformed (see Section 2.4.2).
UPDATE_FAILED (0x8): REQUEST_UPDATE failed on this subscription (see
Section 9.11).
9.16. FETCH
A subscriber issues a FETCH to a publisher to request a range of
already published objects within a track.
There are three types of Fetch messages.
+======+========================+
| Code | Fetch Type |
+======+========================+
| 0x1 | Standalone Fetch |
+------+------------------------+
| 0x2 | Relative Joining Fetch |
+------+------------------------+
| 0x3 | Absolute Joining Fetch |
+------+------------------------+
Table 2
An endpoint that receives a Fetch Type other than 0x1, 0x2 or 0x3
MUST close the session with a PROTOCOL_VIOLATION.
9.16.1. Standalone Fetch
A Fetch of Objects performed independently of any Subscribe.
A Standalone Fetch includes this structure:
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Standalone Fetch {
Track Namespace (..),
Track Name Length (i),
Track Name (..),
Start Location (Location),
End Location (Location)
}
* Track Namespace: Identifies the namespace of the track as defined
in (Section 2.4.1).
* Track Name: Identifies the track name as defined in
(Section 2.4.1).
* Start Location: The start Location.
* End Location: The end Location, plus 1. A Location.Object value
of 0 means the entire group is requested.
9.16.2. Joining Fetches
A Joining Fetch is associated with a Subscribe request by specifying
the Request ID of a subscription in the Established or Pending
(subscriber) state. A publisher receiving a Joining Fetch uses
properties of the associated Subscribe to determine the Track
Namespace, Track Name and End Location such that it is contiguous
with the associated Subscribe. The subscriber can set the Start
Location to an absolute Location or a Location relative to the
current group.
A Subscriber can use a Joining Fetch to, for example, fill a playback
buffer with a certain number of groups prior to the live edge of a
track.
A Joining Fetch is only permitted when the associated Subscribe has
the Filter Type Largest Object; any other value results in closing
the session with a PROTOCOL_VIOLATION.
If no Objects have been published for the track, and the SUBSCRIBE_OK
did not include a LARGEST_OBJECT parameter (Section 9.2.2.7), the
publisher MUST respond with a REQUEST_ERROR with error code
INVALID_RANGE.
A Joining Fetch includes this structure:
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Joining Fetch {
Joining Request ID (i),
Joining Start (i)
}
* Joining Request ID: The Request ID of the subscription to be
joined. If a publisher receives a Joining Fetch with a Request ID
that does not correspond to a subscription in the same session in
the Established or Pending (subscriber) states, it MUST return a
REQUEST_ERROR with error code INVALID_JOINING_REQUEST_ID.
* Joining Start : A relative or absolute value used to determing the
Start Location, described below.
9.16.2.1. Joining Fetch Range Calculation
The Largest Location value from the corresponding subscription is
used to calculate the end of a Joining Fetch, so the Objects
retrieved by the FETCH and SUBSCRIBE are contiguous and non-
overlapping.
The publisher receiving a Joining Fetch sets the End Location to
{Subscribe Largest Location.Object + 1}. Here Subscribe Largest
Location is the saved value from when the subscription started (see
Section 5.1).
Note: the last Object included in the Joining FETCH response is
Subscribe Largest Location. The + 1 above indicates the equivalent
Standalone Fetch encoding.
For a Relative Joining Fetch, the publisher sets the Start Location
to {Subscribe Largest Location.Group - Joining Start, 0}.
For an Absolute Joining Fetch, the publisher sets the Start Location
to {Joining Start, 0}.
9.16.3. Fetch Handling
The format of FETCH is as follows:
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FETCH Message {
Type (i) = 0x16,
Length (16),
Request ID (i),
Fetch Type (i),
[Standalone (Standalone Fetch),]
[Joining (Joining Fetch),]
Number of Parameters (i),
Parameters (..) ...
}
Figure 18: MOQT FETCH Message
* Request ID: See Section 9.1.
* Fetch Type: Identifies the type of Fetch, whether Standalone,
Relative Joining or Absolute Joining.
* Standalone: Standalone Fetch structure included when Fetch Type is
0x1
* Joining: Joining Fetch structure included when Fetch Type is 0x2
or 0x3.
* Parameters: The parameters are defined in Section 9.2.2.
A publisher responds to a FETCH request with either a FETCH_OK or a
REQUEST_ERROR message. The publisher creates a new unidirectional
stream that is used to send the Objects. The FETCH_OK or
REQUEST_ERROR can come at any time relative to object delivery.
The publisher responding to a FETCH is responsible for delivering all
available Objects in the requested range in the requested order (see
Section 9.2.2.4). The Objects in the response are delivered on a
single unidirectional stream. Any gaps in the Group and Object IDs
in the response stream indicate objects that do not exist. For
Ascending Group Order this includes ranges between the first
requested object and the first object in the stream; between objects
in the stream; and between the last object in the stream and the
Largest Group/Object indicated in FETCH_OK, so long as the fetch
stream is terminated by a FIN. If no Objects exist in the requested
range, the publisher opens the unidirectional stream, sends the
FETCH_HEADER (see Section 10.4.4) and closes the stream with a FIN.
A relay that has cached objects from the beginning of the range MAY
start sending objects immediately in response to a FETCH. If it
encounters an object in the requested range that is not cached and
has unknown status, the relay MUST pause subsequent delivery until it
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has confirmed the object's status upstream. If the upstream FETCH
fails, the relay sends a REQUEST_ERROR and can reset the
unidirectional stream. It can choose to do so immediately or wait
until the cached objects have been delivered before resetting the
stream.
The Object Forwarding Preference does not apply to fetches.
Fetch specifies an inclusive range of Objects starting at Start
Location and ending at End Location. End Location MUST specify the
same or a larger Location than Start Location for Standalone and
Absolute Joining Fetches.
Objects that are not yet published will not be retrieved by a FETCH.
The Largest available Object in the requested range is indicated in
the FETCH_OK, and is the last Object a fetch will return if the End
Location have not yet been published.
If Start Location is greater than the Largest Object (Section 9.9)
the publisher MUST return REQUEST_ERROR with error code
INVALID_RANGE.
A publisher MUST send fetched groups in the requested group order,
either ascending or descending. Within each group, objects are sent
in Object ID order; subgroup ID is not used for ordering.
If a Publisher receives a FETCH with a range that includes one or
more Objects with unknown status (e.g. a Relay has temporarily lost
contact with the Original Publisher and does not have the Object in
cache), it can choose to reset the FETCH data stream with
UNKNOWN_OBJECT_STATUS, or indicate the range of unknown Objects and
continue serving other known Objects.
9.17. FETCH_OK
A publisher sends a FETCH_OK control message in response to
successful fetches. A publisher MAY send Objects in response to a
FETCH before the FETCH_OK message is sent, but the FETCH_OK MUST NOT
be sent until the End Location is known.
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FETCH_OK Message {
Type (i) = 0x18,
Length (16),
Request ID (i),
End Of Track (8),
End Location (Location),
Number of Parameters (i),
Parameters (..) ...
Track Extensions (..),
}
Figure 19: MOQT FETCH_OK Message
* Request ID: The Request ID of the FETCH this message is replying
to Section 9.9.
* End Of Track: 1 if all Objects have been published on this Track,
and the End Location is the final Object in the Track, 0 if not.
* End Location: The largest object covered by the FETCH response.
The End Location is determined as follows:
- If the requested FETCH End Location was beyond the Largest
known (possibly final) Object, End Location is {Largest.Group,
Largest.Object + 1}
- If End Location.Object in the FETCH request was 0 and the
response covers the last Object in the Group, End Location is
{Fetch.End Location.Group, 0}
- Otherwise, End Location is Fetch.End Location Where Fetch.End
Location is either Fetch.Standalone.End Location or the
computed End Location described in Section 9.16.2.1.
If the relay is subscribed to the track, it uses its knowledge of
the largest {Group, Object} to set End Location. If it is not
subscribed and the requested End Location exceeds its cached data,
the relay makes an upstream request to complete the FETCH, and
uses the upstream response to set End Location.
If End Location is smaller than the Start Location in the
corresponding FETCH the receiver MUST close the session with a
PROTOCOL_VIOLATION.
* Parameters: The parameters are defined in Section 9.2.2.
* Track Extensions : A sequence of Extension Headers. See
Section 2.5.
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9.18. FETCH_CANCEL
A subscriber sends a FETCH_CANCEL message to a publisher to indicate
it is no longer interested in receiving objects for the fetch
identified by the 'Request ID'. The publisher SHOULD promptly close
the unidirectional stream, even if it is in the middle of delivering
an object.
The format of FETCH_CANCEL is as follows:
FETCH_CANCEL Message {
Type (i) = 0x17,
Length (16),
Request ID (i)
}
Figure 20: MOQT FETCH_CANCEL Message
* Request ID: The Request ID of the FETCH (Section 9.16) this
message is cancelling.
9.19. TRACK_STATUS
A potential subscriber sends a TRACK_STATUS message on the control
stream to obtain information about the current status of a given
track.
The TRACK_STATUS message format is identical to the SUBSCRIBE message
(Section 9.9), but subscriber parameters related to Track delivery
(e.g. SUBSCRIBER_PRIORITY) are not included.
The receiver of a TRACK_STATUS message treats it identically as if it
had received a SUBSCRIBE message, except it does not create
downstream subscription state or send any Objects. If successful,
the publisher responds with a REQUEST_OK message with the same
parameters it would have set in a SUBSCRIBE_OK. Track Alias is not
used. A publisher responds to a failed TRACK_STATUS with an
appropriate REQUEST_ERROR message.
Relays without an Established subscription MAY forward TRACK_STATUS
to one or more publishers, or MAY initiate a subscription (subject to
authorization) as described in Section 8.5 to determine the response.
The publisher does not send PUBLISH_DONE for this request, and the
subscriber cannot send REQUEST_UPDATE or UNSUBSCRIBE.
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9.20. PUBLISH_NAMESPACE
The publisher sends the PUBLISH_NAMESPACE control message to
advertise that it has tracks available within a Track Namespace. The
receiver verifies the publisher is authorized to publish tracks under
this namespace.
PUBLISH_NAMESPACE Message {
Type (i) = 0x6,
Length (16),
Request ID (i),
Track Namespace (..),
Number of Parameters (i),
Parameters (..) ...
}
Figure 21: MOQT PUBLISH_NAMESPACE Message
* Request ID: See Section 9.1.
* Track Namespace: Identifies a track's namespace as defined in
Section 2.4.1.
* Parameters: The parameters are defined in Section 9.2.2.
9.21. NAMESPACE
The NAMESPACE message is similar to the PUBLISH_NAMESPACE message,
except it is sent on the response stream of a SUBSCRIBE_NAMESPACE
request. All NAMESPACE messages are in response to a
SUBSCRIBE_NAMESPACE, so only the namespace tuples after the 'Track
Namespace Prefix' are included in the 'Track Namespace Suffix'.
NAMESPACE Message {
Type (i) = 0x8,
Length (16),
Track Namespace Suffix (..),
}
Figure 22: MOQT NAMESPACE Message
* Track Namespace Suffix: Specifies the final portion of a track's
namespace as defined in Section 2.4.1 after removing namespace
tuples included in 'Track Namespace Prefix' {message-subscribe-
ns}.
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9.22. PUBLISH_NAMESPACE_DONE
The publisher sends the PUBLISH_NAMESPACE_DONE control message to
indicate its intent to stop serving new subscriptions for tracks
within the provided Track Namespace.
PUBLISH_NAMESPACE_DONE Message {
Type (i) = 0x9,
Length (16),
Request ID (i)
}
Figure 23: MOQT PUBLISH_NAMESPACE_DONE Message
* Request ID: The Request ID of the PUBLISH_NAMESPACE that is being
terminated. See Section 9.9.
9.23. NAMESPACE_DONE
The publisher sends the NAMESPACE_DONE control message to indicate
its intent to stop serving new subscriptions for tracks within the
provided Track Namespace. All NAMESPACE_DONE messages are in
response to a SUBSCRIBE_NAMESPACE, so only the namespace tuples after
the 'Track Namespace Prefix' are included in the 'Track Namespace
Suffix'.
NAMESPACE_DONE Message {
Type (i) = 0xE,
Length (16),
Track Namespace Suffix (..)
}
Figure 24: MOQT NAMESPACE_DONE Message
* Track Namespace Suffix: Specifies the final portion of a track's
namespace as defined in Section 2.4.1. The namespace begins with
the 'Track Namespace Prefix' specified in {message-subscribe-ns}.
9.24. PUBLISH_NAMESPACE_CANCEL
The subscriber sends an PUBLISH_NAMESPACE_CANCEL control message to
indicate it will stop sending new subscriptions for tracks within the
provided Track Namespace.
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PUBLISH_NAMESPACE_CANCEL Message {
Type (i) = 0xC,
Length (16),
Request ID (i),
Error Code (i),
Error Reason (Reason Phrase)
}
Figure 25: MOQT PUBLISH_NAMESPACE_CANCEL Message
* Request ID: The Request ID of the PUBLISH_NAMESPACE that is being
terminated. See Section 9.9.
* Error Code: Identifies an integer error code for canceling the
publish. PUBLISH_NAMESPACE_CANCEL uses the same error codes as
REQUEST_ERROR (Section 9.8) that responds to PUBLISH_NAMESPACE.
* Error Reason: Provides the reason for publish cancelation. See
Section 1.4.3.
9.25. SUBSCRIBE_NAMESPACE
The subscriber sends a SUBSCRIBE_NAMESPACE control message on a new
bidirectional stream to a publisher to request the current set of
matching published namespaces and/or Established subscriptions, as
well as future updates to the set.
SUBSCRIBE_NAMESPACE Message {
Type (i) = 0x11,
Length (16),
Request ID (i),
Track Namespace Prefix (..),
Subscribe Options (i),
Number of Parameters (i),
Parameters (..) ...
}
Figure 26: MOQT SUBSCRIBE_NAMESPACE Message
* Request ID: See Section 9.1.
* Track Namespace Prefix: A Track Namespace structure as described
in Section 2.4.1 with between 0 and 32 Track Namespace Fields.
This prefix is matched against track namespaces known to the
publisher. For example, if the publisher is a relay that has
received PUBLISH_NAMESPACE messages for namespaces ("example.com",
"meeting=123", "participant=100") and ("example.com",
"meeting=123", "participant=200"), a SUBSCRIBE_NAMESPACE for
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("example.com", "meeting=123") would match both. If an endpoint
receives a Track Namespace Prefix consisting of greater than than
32 Track Namespace Fields, it MUST close the session with a
PROTOCOL_VIOLATION.
* Subscribe Options: Allows subscribers to request PUBLISH (0x00),
NAMESPACE (0x01), or both (0x02) for a given SUBSCRIBE_NAMESPACE
request.
* Parameters: The parameters are defined in Section 9.2.2.
The publisher will respond with REQUEST_OK or REQUEST_ERROR on the
response half of the stream. If the SUBSCRIBE_NAMESPACE is
successful, the publisher will send matching NAMESPACE messages on
the response stream if they are requested. If it is an error, the
stream will be immediately closed via FIN. Also, any matching
PUBLISH messages without an Established Subscription will be sent on
the control stream. When there are changes to the namespaces or
subscriptions being published and the subscriber is subscribed to
them, the publisher sends the corresponding NAMESPACE,
NAMESPACE_DONE, or PUBLISH messages.
A subscriber cannot make overlapping namespace subscriptions on a
single session. Within a session, if a publisher receives a
SUBSCRIBE_NAMESPACE with a Track Namespace Prefix that shares a
common prefix with an established namespace subscription, it MUST
respond with REQUEST_ERROR with error code PREFIX_OVERLAP.
The publisher MUST ensure the subscriber is authorized to perform
this namespace subscription.
SUBSCRIBE_NAMESPACE is not required for a publisher to send
PUBLISH_NAMESPACE, PUBLISH_NAMESPACE_DONE or PUBLISH messages to a
subscriber. It is useful in applications or relays where subscribers
are only interested in or authorized to access a subset of available
namespaces and tracks.
If the FORWARD parameter (Section 9.2.2.8) is present in this message
and equal to 0, PUBLISH messages resulting from this
SUBSCRIBE_NAMESPACE will set the FORWARD parameter to 0. If the
FORWARD parameter is equal to 1 or omitted from this message, PUBLISH
messages resulting from this SUBSCRIBE_NAMESPACE will set the FORWARD
parameter to 1, or indicate that value by omitting the parameter (see
Section 5.1).
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The publisher MUST NOT send NAMESPACE_DONE for a namespace suffix
before the corresponding NAMESPACE. If a subscriber receives a
NAMESPACE_DONE before the corresponding NAMESPACE, it MUST close the
session with a 'PROTOCOL_VIOLATION'.
10. Data Streams and Datagrams
A publisher sends Objects matching a subscription on Data Streams or
Datagrams and sends Objects matching a FETCH request on one Data
Stream.
All unidirectional MOQT streams start with a variable-length integer
indicating the type of the stream in question.
+===========+==================================+
| ID | Type |
+===========+==================================+
| 0x10-0x1D | SUBGROUP_HEADER (Section 10.4.2) |
+-----------+----------------------------------+
| 0x05 | FETCH_HEADER (Section 10.4.4) |
+-----------+----------------------------------+
Table 3
All MOQT datagrams start with a variable-length integer indicating
the type of the datagram. See Section 10.3.1.
An endpoint that receives an unknown stream or datagram type MUST
close the session.
Every Object has a 'Object Forwarding Preference' and the Original
Publisher MAY use both Subgroups and Datagrams within a Group or
Track.
10.1. Track Alias
To optimize wire efficiency, Subgroups and Datagrams refer to a track
by a numeric identifier, rather than the Full Track Name. Track
Alias is chosen by the publisher and included in SUBSCRIBE_OK
(Section 9.10) or PUBLISH (Section 9.13).
Objects can arrive after a subscription has been cancelled.
Subscribers SHOULD retain sufficient state to quickly discard these
unwanted Objects, rather than treating them as belonging to an
unknown Track Alias.
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10.2. Objects
An Object contains a range of contiguous bytes from the specified
track, as well as associated metadata required to deliver, cache, and
forward it. Objects are sent by publishers.
10.2.1. Canonical Object Properties
A canonical MoQ Object has the following information:
* Track Namespace and Track Name: The track this object belongs to.
* Group ID: The identifier of the Object's Group (see Section 2.3)
within the Track.
* Object ID: The order of the object within the group.
* Publisher Priority: An 8 bit integer indicating the publisher's
priority for the Object (Section 7).
* Object Forwarding Preference: An enumeration indicating how a
publisher sends an object. The preferences are Subgroup and
Datagram. Object Forwarding Preference is a property of an
individual Object and can vary among Objects in the same Track.
In a subscription, an Object MUST be sent according to its Object
Forwarding Preference.
* Subgroup ID: The identifier of the Object's Subgroup (see
Section 2.2) within the Group. This field is omitted if the
Object Forwarding Preference is Datagram.
* Object Status: An enumeration used to indicate whether the Object
is a normal Object or mark the end of a group or track. See
Section 10.2.1.1 below.
* Object Extensions : A sequence of Extensions associated with the
object. See Section 10.2.1.2.
* Object Payload: An opaque payload intended for an End Subscriber
and SHOULD NOT be processed by a relay. Only present when 'Object
Status' is Normal (0x0).
10.2.1.1. Object Status
The Object Status is a field that is only present in objects that are
delivered via a SUBSCRIPTION, and is absent in Objects delivered via
a FETCH. It allows the publisher to explicitly communicate that a
specific range of objects does not exist.
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Status can have following values:
* 0x0 := Normal object. This status is implicit for any non-zero
length object. Zero-length objects explicitly encode the Normal
status.
* 0x3 := Indicates End of Group. Indicates that no objects with the
specified Group ID and the Object ID that is greater than or equal
to the one specified exist in the group identified by the Group
ID.
* 0x4 := Indicates End of Track. Indicates that no objects with the
location that is equal to or greater than the one specified exist.
All of those SHOULD be cached.
Any other value SHOULD be treated as a protocol error and the session
SHOULD be closed with a PROTOCOL_VIOLATION (Section 3.4). Any object
with a status code other than zero MUST have an empty payload.
10.2.1.2. Object Extension Headers
Any Object with status Normal can have extension headers
(Section 2.5). If an endpoint receives extension headers on Objects
with status that is not Normal, it MUST close the session with a
PROTOCOL_VIOLATION.
Object Extension Headers are visible to relays and are intended to be
relevant to MOQT Object distribution. Any Object metadata never
intended to be accessed by the transport or Relays SHOULD be
serialized as part of the Object payload and not as an extension
header.
Object Extension Headers are serialized as a length in bytes followed
by Key-Value-Pairs (see Figure 2).
Extensions {
Extension Headers Length (i),
Extension Headers (..),
}
Object Extension Header types are registered in the IANA table 'MOQ
Extension Headers'. See Section 13.
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10.3. Datagrams
A single object can be conveyed in a datagram. The Track Alias field
(Section 10.1) indicates the track this Datagram belongs to. If an
endpoint receives a datagram with an unknown Track Alias, it MAY drop
the datagram or choose to buffer it for a brief period to handle
reordering with the control message that establishes the Track Alias.
An Object received in an OBJECT_DATAGRAM message has an Object
Forwarding Preference = Datagram.
To send an Object with Object Forwarding Preference = Datagram,
determine the length of the header and payload and send the Object as
datagram. When the total size is larger than the maximum datagram
size for the session, the Object will be dropped without any explicit
notification.
Each session along the path between the Original Publisher and End
Subscriber might have different maximum datagram sizes.
Additionally, Object Extension Headers (Section 10.2.1.2) can be
added to Objects as they pass through the MOQT network, increasing
the size of the Object and the chances it will exceed the maximum
datagram size of a downstream session and be dropped.
10.3.1. Object Datagram
An OBJECT_DATAGRAM carries a single object in a datagram.
OBJECT_DATAGRAM {
Type (i) = 0x00..0x0F / 0x20..0x21 / 0x24..0x25 /
0x28..0x29 / 0x2C..0x2D,
Track Alias (i),
Group ID (i),
[Object ID (i),]
[Publisher Priority (8),]
[Extensions (..),]
[Object Status (i),]
[Object Payload (..),]
}
Figure 27: MOQT OBJECT_DATAGRAM
The Type field in the OBJECT_DATAGRAM takes the form 0b00X0XXXX (or
the set of values from 0x00 to 0x0F, 0x20 to 0x2F). However, not all
Type values in this range are valid. The four low-order bits and bit
5 of the Type field determine which fields are present in the
datagram:
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* The *EXTENSIONS* bit (0x01) indicates when the Extensions field is
present. When set to 1, the Extensions structure defined in
Section 10.2.1.2 is present. When set to 0, the Extensions field
is absent. If an endpoint receives a datagram with the EXTENSIONS
bit set and an Extension Headers Length of 0, it MUST close the
session with a PROTOCOL_VIOLATION.
* The *END_OF_GROUP* bit (0x02) indicates End of Group. When set to
1, this indicates that no Object with the same Group ID and an
Object ID greater than the Object ID in this datagram exists.
* The *ZERO_OBJECT_ID* bit (0x04) indicates when the Object ID field
is present. When set to 1, the Object ID field is omitted and the
Object ID is
1. When set to 0, the Object ID field is present.
* The *DEFAULT_PRIORITY* bit (0x08) indicates when the Priority
field is present. When set to 1, the Priority field is omitted
and this Object inherits the Publisher Priority specified in the
control message that established the subscription. When set to 0,
the Priority field is present.
* The *STATUS* bit (0x20) indicates whether the datagram contains an
Object Status or Object Payload. When set to 1, the Object Status
field is present and there is no Object Payload. When set to 0,
the Object Payload is present and the Object Status field is
omitted. There is no explicit length field for the Object
Payload; the entirety of the transport datagram following the
Object header fields contains the payload.
The following Type values are invalid. If an endpoint receives a
datagram with any of these Type values, it MUST close the session
with a PROTOCOL_VIOLATION:
* Type values with both the STATUS bit (0x20) and END_OF_GROUP bit
(0x02) set: 0x22, 0x23, 0x26, 0x27, 0x2A, 0x2B, 0x2E, 0x2F. An
object status message cannot signal end of group.
* Type values that do not match the form 0b00X0XXXX (i.e., Type
values outside the ranges 0x00..0x0F and 0x20..0x2F).
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10.4. Streams
When Objects are sent on streams, the stream begins with a Subgroup
or Fetch Header and is followed by one or more sets of serialized
Object fields. If a stream ends gracefully (i.e., the stream
terminates with a FIN) in the middle of a serialized Object, the
session SHOULD be closed with a PROTOCOL_VIOLATION.
A publisher SHOULD NOT open more than one stream at a time with the
same Subgroup Header field values.
10.4.1. Stream Cancellation
Streams aside from the control stream MAY be canceled due to
congestion or other reasons by either the publisher or subscriber.
Early termination of a stream does not affect the MoQ application
state, and therefore has no effect on outstanding subscriptions.
10.4.2. Subgroup Header
All Objects on a Subgroup stream belong to the track identified by
Track Alias (see Section 10.1) and the Subgroup indicated by 'Group
ID' and Subgroup ID indicated by the SUBGROUP_HEADER.
If an endpoint receives a subgroup with an unknown Track Alias, it
MAY abandon the stream, or choose to buffer it for a brief period to
handle reordering with the control message that establishes the Track
Alias. The endpoint MAY withhold stream flow control beyond the
SUBGROUP_HEADER until the Track Alias has been established. To
prevent deadlocks, the publisher MUST allocate connection flow
control to the control stream before allocating it any data streams.
Otherwise, a receiver might wait for a control message containing a
Track Alias to release flow control, while the sender waits for flow
control to send the message.
SUBGROUP_HEADER {
Type (i) = 0x10..0x15 / 0x18..0x1D / 0x30..0x35 / 0x38..0x3D,
Track Alias (i),
Group ID (i),
[Subgroup ID (i),]
[Publisher Priority (8),]
}
Figure 28: MOQT SUBGROUP_HEADER
All Objects received on a stream opened with SUBGROUP_HEADER have an
Object Forwarding Preference = Subgroup.
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The Type field in the SUBGROUP_HEADER takes the form 0b00X1XXXX (or
the set of values from 0x10 to 0x1F, 0x30 to 0x3F), where bit 4 is
always set to 1. However, not all Type values in this range are
valid. The four low-order bits and bit 5 determine which fields are
present in the header:
* The *EXTENSIONS* bit (0x01) indicates when the Extensions field is
present in all Objects in this Subgroup. When set to 1, the
Extensions structure defined in Section 10.2.1.2 is present in all
Objects. When set to 0, the Extensions field is never present.
Objects with no extensions set Extension Headers Length to 0.
* The *SUBGROUP_ID_MODE* field (bits 1-2, mask 0x06) is a two-bit
field that determines the encoding of the Subgroup ID. To extract
this value, perform a bitwise AND with mask 0x06 and right-shift
by 1 bit:
- 0b00: The Subgroup ID field is absent and the Subgroup ID is 0.
- 0b01: The Subgroup ID field is absent and the Subgroup ID is
the Object ID of the first Object transmitted in this Subgroup.
- 0b10: The Subgroup ID field is present in the header.
- 0b11: Reserved for future use.
* The *END_OF_GROUP* bit (0x08) indicates that this subgroup
contains the largest Object in the Group. When set to 1, the
subscriber can infer the final Object in the Group when the data
stream is terminated by a FIN. In this case, Objects that have
the same Group ID and an Object ID larger than the last Object
received on the stream do not exist. This does not apply when the
data stream is terminated with a RESET_STREAM or RESET_STREAM_AT.
* The *DEFAULT_PRIORITY* bit (0x20) indicates when the Priority
field is present. When set to 1, the Priority field is omitted
and this Subgroup inherits the Publisher Priority specified in the
control message that established the subscription. When set to 0,
the Priority field is present in the Subgroup header.
The following Type values are invalid. If an endpoint receives a
stream header with any of these Type values, it MUST close the
session with a PROTOCOL_VIOLATION:
* Type values with SUBGROUP_ID_MODE set to 0b11: 0x16, 0x17, 0x1E,
0x1F, 0x36, 0x37, 0x3E, 0x3F. This mode is reserved for future
use.
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* Type values that do not match the form 0b00X1XXXX (i.e., Type
values outside the ranges 0x10..0x1F and 0x30..0x3F, or values
where bit 4 is not set).
To send an Object with Object Forwarding Preference = Subgroup, find
the open stream that is associated with the subscription, Group ID
and Subgroup ID, or open a new one and send the SUBGROUP_HEADER.
Then serialize the following fields.
The Object Status field is only sent if the Object Payload Length is
zero.
The Object ID Delta + 1 is added to the previous Object ID in the
Subgroup stream if there was one. The Object ID is the Object ID
Delta if it's the first Object in the Subgroup stream. For example,
a Subgroup of sequential Object IDs starting at 0 will have 0 for all
Object ID Delta values. A consumer cannot infer information about
the existence of Objects between the current and previous Object ID
in the Subgroup (e.g. when Object ID Delta is non-zero) unless there
is an Prior Object ID Gap extesnion header (see Section 11.4).
{
Object ID Delta (i),
[Extensions (..),]
Object Payload Length (i),
[Object Status (i),]
[Object Payload (..),]
}
Figure 29: MOQT Subgroup Object Fields
10.4.3. Closing Subgroup Streams
Subscribers will often need to know if they have received all objects
in a Subgroup, particularly if they serve as a relay or cache. QUIC
and Webtransport streams provide signals that can be used for this
purpose. Closing Subgroups promptly frees system resources and often
unlocks flow control credit to open more streams.
If a sender has delivered all objects in a Subgroup to the QUIC
stream, except any Objects with Locations smaller than the
subscription's Start Location, it MUST close the stream with a FIN.
If a sender closes the stream before delivering all such objects to
the QUIC stream, it MUST use a RESET_STREAM or RESET_STREAM_AT
[I-D.draft-ietf-quic-reliable-stream-reset] frame. This includes,
but is not limited to:
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* An Object in an open Subgroup exceeding its Delivery Timeout
* Early termination of subscription due to an UNSUBSCRIBE message
* A publisher's decision to end the subscription early
* A REQUEST_UPDATE moving the subscription's End Group to a smaller
Group or the Start Location to a larger Location
* Omitting a Subgroup Object due to the subcriber's Forward State
When RESET_STREAM_AT is used, the reliable_size SHOULD include the
stream header so the receiver can identify the corresponding
subscription and accurately account for reset data streams when
handling PUBLISH_DONE (see Section 9.15). Publishers that reset data
streams without using RESET_STREAM_AT with an appropriate
reliable_size can cause subscribers to hold on to subscription state
until a timeout expires.
A sender might send all objects in a Subgroup and the FIN on a QUIC
stream, and then reset the stream. In this case, the receiving
application would receive the FIN if and only if all objects were
received. If the application receives all data on the stream and the
FIN, it can ignore any RESET_STREAM it receives.
If a sender will not deliver any objects from a Subgroup, it MAY send
a SUBGROUP_HEADER on a new stream, with no objects, and then send
RESET_STREAM_AT with a reliable_size equal to the length of the
stream header. This explicitly tells the receiver there is an unsent
Subgroup.
A relay MUST NOT forward an Object on an existing Subgroup stream
unless it is the next Object in that Subgroup. A relay determines
that an Object is the next Object in the Subgroup if at least one of
the following is true:
* The Object ID is one greater than the previous Object sent on this
Subgroup stream.
* The Object was received on the same upstream Subgroup stream as
the previously sent Object on the downstream Subgroup stream, with
no other Objects in between.
* It determined all Object IDs between the current and previous
Object IDs on the Subgroup stream belong to different Subgroups or
do not exist.
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If the relay does not know if an Object is the next Object, it MUST
reset the Subgroup stream and open a new one to forward it.
Since SUBSCRIBEs always end on a group boundary, an ending
subscription can always cleanly close all its subgroups. A sender
that terminates a stream early for any other reason (e.g., to handoff
to a different sender) MUST use RESET_STREAM or RESET_STREAM_AT.
Senders SHOULD terminate a stream on Group boundaries to avoid doing
so.
An MOQT implementation that processes a stream FIN is assured it has
received all objects in a subgroup from the start of the
subscription. If a relay, it can forward stream FINs to its own
subscribers once those objects have been sent. A relay MAY treat
receipt of EndOfGroup or EndOfTrack objects as a signal to close
corresponding streams even if the FIN has not arrived, as further
objects on the stream would be a protocol violation.
Similarly, an EndOfGroup message indicates the maximum Object ID in
the Group, so if all Objects in the Group have been received, a FIN
can be sent on any stream where the entire subgroup has been sent.
This might be complex to implement.
Processing a RESET_STREAM or RESET_STREAM_AT means that there might
be other objects in the Subgroup beyond the last one received. A
relay might immediately reset the corresponding downstream stream, or
it might attempt to recover the missing Objects in an effort to send
all the Objects in the subgroups and the FIN. It also might send
RESET_STREAM_AT with reliable_size set to the last Object it has, so
as to reliably deliver the Objects it has while signaling that other
Objects might exist.
A subscriber MAY send a QUIC STOP_SENDING frame for a subgroup stream
if the Group or Subgroup is no longer of interest to it. The
publisher SHOULD respond with RESET_STREAM or RESET_STREAM_AT. If
RESET_STREAM_AT is sent, note that the receiver has indicated no
interest in the objects, so setting a reliable_size beyond the stream
header is of questionable utility.
RESET_STREAM and STOP_SENDING on SUBSCRIBE data streams have no
impact on other Subgroups in the Group or the subscription, although
applications might cancel all Subgroups in a Group at once.
A publisher that receives a STOP_SENDING on a Subgroup stream SHOULD
NOT attempt to open a new stream to deliver additional Objects in
that Subgroup.
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The application SHOULD use a relevant error code in RESET_STREAM or
RESET_STREAM_AT, as defined below:
INTERNAL_ERROR (0x0): An implementation specific error.
CANCELLED (0x1): The subscriber requested cancellation via
UNSUBSCRIBE, FETCH_CANCEL or STOP_SENDING, or the publisher ended
the subscription, in which case PUBLISH_DONE (Section 9.15) will
have a more detailed status code.
DELIVERY_TIMEOUT (0x2): The DELIVERY TIMEOUT Section 9.2.2.2 was
exceeded for this stream.
SESSION_CLOSED (0x3): The publisher session is being closed.
UNKNOWN_OBJECT_STATUS (0x4): In response to a FETCH, the publisher
is unable to determine the Status of the next Object in the
requested range.
MALFORMED_TRACK (0x12): A relay publisher detected that the track
was malformed (see Section 2.4.2).
10.4.4. Fetch Header
When a stream begins with FETCH_HEADER, all objects on the stream
belong to the track requested in the Fetch message identified by
Request ID.
FETCH_HEADER {
Type (i) = 0x5,
Request ID (i),
}
Figure 30: MOQT FETCH_HEADER
Each Object sent on a FETCH stream after the FETCH_HEADER has the
following format:
{
Serialization Flags (i),
[Group ID (i),]
[Subgroup ID (i),]
[Object ID (i),]
[Publisher Priority (8),]
[Extensions (..),]
Object Payload Length (i),
[Object Payload (..),]
}
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Figure 31: MOQT Fetch Object Fields
The Serialization Flags field defines the serialization of the
Object. It is a variable-length integer. When less than 128, the
bits represent flags described below. The following additional
values are defined:
+=======+===========================+
| Value | Meaning |
+=======+===========================+
| 0x8C | End of Non-Existent Range |
+-------+---------------------------+
| 0x10C | End of Unknown Range |
+-------+---------------------------+
Table 4
Any other value is a PROTOCOL_VIOLATION.
10.4.4.1. Flags
The two least significant bits (LSBs) of the Serialization Flags form
a two-bit field that defines the encoding of the Subgroup. To
extract this value, the Subscriber performs a bitwise AND operation
with the mask 0x03.
+==============================+===============================+
| Bitmask Result | Meaning |
| (Serialization Flags & 0x03) | |
+==============================+===============================+
| 0x00 | Subgroup ID is zero |
+------------------------------+-------------------------------+
| 0x01 | Subgroup ID is the prior |
| | Object's Subgroup ID |
+------------------------------+-------------------------------+
| 0x02 | Subgroup ID is the prior |
| | Object's Subgroup ID plus one |
+------------------------------+-------------------------------+
| 0x03 | The Subgroup ID field is |
| | present |
+------------------------------+-------------------------------+
Table 5
The following table defines additional flags within the Serialization
Flags field. Each flag is an independent boolean value, where a set
bit (1) indicates the corresponding condition is true.
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+=========+============================+============================+
| Bitmask | Condition if set | Condition if not set (0) |
+=========+============================+============================+
| 0x04 | Object ID field is | Object ID is the prior |
| | present | Object's ID plus one |
+---------+----------------------------+----------------------------+
| 0x08 | Group ID field is | Group ID is the prior |
| | present | Object's Group ID |
+---------+----------------------------+----------------------------+
| 0x10 | Priority field is | Priority is the prior |
| | present | Object's Priority |
+---------+----------------------------+----------------------------+
| 0x20 | Extensions field is | Extensions field is not |
| | present | present |
+---------+----------------------------+----------------------------+
| 0x40 | Datagram: ignore the two | Use the subgroup ID in the |
| | least significant bits | two least significant bits |
+---------+----------------------------+----------------------------+
Table 6
If the first Object in the FETCH response uses a flag that references
fields in the prior Object, the Subscriber MUST close the session
with a PROTOCOL_VIOLATION.
The Extensions structure is defined in Section 10.2.1.2.
When encoding an Object with a Forwarding Preference of "Datagram"
(see Section 10.2.1), the object has no Subgroup ID. The publisher
MUST SET bit 0x40 to '1'. When 0x40 is set, it SHOULD set the two
least significant bits to zero and the subscriber MUST ignore the
bits.
10.4.4.2. End of Range
When Serialization Flags indicates an End of Range (e.g. values 0x8C
or 0x10C), the Group ID and Object ID fields are present. Subgroup
ID, Priority and Extensions are not present. All Objects with
Locations between the last serialized Object, if any, and this
Location, inclusive, either do not exist (when Serialization Flags is
0x8C) or are unknown (0x10C). A publisher SHOULD NOT use End of Non-
Existent Range in a FETCH response except to split a range of Objects
that will not be serialized into those that are known not to exist
and those with unknown status.
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10.5. Examples
Sending a subgroup on one stream:
Stream = 2
SUBGROUP_HEADER {
Type = 0x14
Track Alias = 2
Group ID = 0
Subgroup ID = 0
Priority = 0
}
{
Object ID = 0
Object Payload Length = 4
Payload = "abcd"
}
{
Object ID = 1
Object Payload Length = 4
Payload = "efgh"
}
Sending a group on one stream, with the first object containing two
Extension Headers.
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Stream = 2
SUBGROUP_HEADER {
Type = 0x35
Track Alias = 2
Group ID = 0
Subgroup ID = 0
}
{
Object ID Delta = 0 (Object ID is 0)
Extension Headers Length = 33
{ Type = 4
Value = 2186796243
},
{ Type = 77
Length = 21
Value = "traceID:123456"
}
Object Payload Length = 4
Payload = "abcd"
}
{
Object ID Delta = 0 (Object ID is 1)
Extension Headers Length = 0
Object Payload Length = 4
Payload = "efgh"
}
11. Extension Headers
The following Extension Headers are defined in MOQT. Each Extension
Header specifies whether it can be used with Tracks, Objects, or
both.
11.1. DELIVERY TIMEOUT
The DELIVERY TIMEOUT extension (Extension Header Type 0x02) is a
Track Extension. It expresses the publisher's DELIVERY_TIMEOUT for a
Track (see Section 9.2.2.2).
DELIVERY_TIMEOUT, if present, MUST contain a value greater than 0.
If an endpoint receives a DELIVERY_TIMEOUT equal to 0 it MUST close
the session with PROTOCOL_VIOLATION.
If unspecified, the subscriber's DELIVERY_TIMEOUT is used. If
neither endpoint specified a timeout, Objects do not time out.
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11.1.1. MAX CACHE DURATION
The MAX_CACHE_DURATION extension (Extension Header Type 0x04) is a
Track Extension.
It is an integer expressing the number of milliseconds an Object can
be served from a cache. If present, the relay MUST NOT start
forwarding any individual Object received through this subscription
or fetch after the specified number of milliseconds has elapsed since
the beginning of the Object was received. This means Objects earlier
in a multi-object stream will expire earlier than Objects later in
the stream. Once Objects have expired from cache, their state
becomes unknown, and a relay that handles a downstream request that
includes those Objects re-requests them.
If the MAX_CACHE_DURATION extension is not sent by the publisher, the
Objects can be cached until implementation constraints cause them to
be evicted.
11.1.1.1. DEFAULT PUBLISHER PRIORITY
The DEFAULT PUBLISHER PRIORITY extension (Extension Header Type 0x0E)
is a Track Extension that specifies the priority of a subscription
relative to other subscriptions in the same session. The value is
from 0 to 255 and lower numbers get higher priority. See Section 7.
Priorities above 255 are invalid. Subgroups and Datagrams for this
subscription inherit this priority, unless they specifically override
it.
A subscription has Publisher Priorty 128 if this extension is
omitted.
11.1.1.2. DEFAULT PUBLISHER GROUP ORDER
The DEFAULT_PUBLISHER_GROUP_ORDER extension (Extension Header Type
0x22) is a Track Extension.
It is an enum indicating the publisher's preference for prioritizing
Objects from different groups within the same subscription (see
Section 7). The allowed values are Ascending (0x1) or Descending
(0x2). If an endpoint receives a value outside this range, it MUST
close the session with PROTOCOL_VIOLATION.
If omitted, the publisher's preference is Ascending (0x1).
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11.1.1.3. DYNAMIC GROUPS
The DYNAMIC_GROUPS Extension (Extension Header Type 0x30) is a Track
Extension. The allowed values are 0 or 1. When the value is 1, it
indicates that the subscriber can request the Original Publisher to
start a new Group by including the NEW_GROUP_REQUEST parameter in
PUBLISH_OK or REQUEST_UPDATE for this Track. If an endpoint receives
a value larger than 1, it MUST close the session with
PROTOCOL_VIOLATION.
If omitted, the value is 0.
11.2. Immutable Extensions
The Immutable Extensions (Extension Header Type 0xB) contains a
sequence of Key-Value-Pairs (see Figure 2) which are also Track or
Object Extension Headers.
Immutable Extensions {
Type (0xB),
Length (i),
Key-Value-Pair (..) ...
}
This extension can be added by the Original Publisher, but MUST NOT
be added by Relays. This extension MUST NOT be modified or removed.
Relays MUST cache this extension if the Object is cached and MUST
forward this extension if the enclosing Object is forwarded. Relays
MAY decode and view these extensions.
A Track is considered malformed (see Section 2.4.2) if any of the
following conditions are detected:
* An Object contains an Immutable Extensions header that contains
another Immutable Extensions key.
* A Key-Value-Pair cannot be parsed.
The following figure shows an example Object structure with a
combination of mutable and immutable extensions and end to end
encrypted metadata in the Object payload.
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Object Header Object Payload
<------------------------------------------------> <------------------->
+--------+-------+------------+-------+-----------+--------------------+
| Object | Ext 1 | Immutable | Ext N | [Payload] | Private Extensions |
| Fields | | Extensions | | [Length] | App Payload |
+--------+-------+------------+-------+-----------+--------------------+
xxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
x = e2e Authenticated Data
y = e2e Encrypted Data
EXT 1 and EXT N can be modified or removed by Relays
An Object MUST NOT contain more than one instance of this extension
header.
11.3. Prior Group ID Gap
Prior Group ID Gap only applies to Objects, not Tracks.
Prior Group ID Gap (Extension Header Type 0x3C) is a variable length
integer containing the number of Groups prior to the current Group
that do not and will never exist. For example, if the Original
Publisher is publishing an Object in Group 7 and knows it will never
publish any Objects in Group 8 or Group 9, it can include Prior Group
ID Gap = 2 in any number of Objects in Group 10, as it sees fit. A
Track is considered malformed (see Section 2.4.2) if any of the
following conditions are detected:
* An Object contains more than one instance of Prior Group ID Gap.
* A Group contains more than one Object with different values for
Prior Group ID Gap.
* An Object has a Prior Group ID Gap larger than the Group ID.
* An endpoint receives an Object with a Prior Group ID Gap covering
an Object it previously received.
* An endpoint receives an Object with a Group ID within a previously
communicated gap.
This extension is optional, as publishers might not know the prior
gap gize, or there may not be a gap. If Prior Group ID Gap is not
present, the receiver cannot infer any information about the
existence of prior groups (see Section 2.3.1).
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This extension can be added by the Original Publisher, but MUST NOT
be added by relays. This extension MAY be removed by relay when the
object in question is served via FETCH, and the gap that the
extension communicates is already communicated implicitly in the
FETCH response; it MUST NOT be modified or removed otherwise.
An Object MUST NOT contain more than one instance of this extension
header.
11.4. Prior Object ID Gap
Prior Object ID Gap only applies to Objects, not Tracks.
Prior Object ID Gap (Extension Header Type 0x3E) is a variable length
integer containing the number of Objects prior to the current Object
that do not and will never exist. For example, if the Original
Publisher is publishing Object 10 in Group 3 and knows it will never
publish Objects 8 or 9 in this Group, it can include Prior Object ID
Gap = 2. A Track is considered malformed (see Section 2.4.2) if any
of the following conditions are detected:
* An Object contains more than one instance of Prior Object ID Gap.
* An Object has a Prior Object ID Gap larger than the Object ID.
* An endpoint receives an Object with a Prior Object ID Gap covering
an Object it previously received.
* An endpoint receives an Object with an Object ID within a
previously communicated gap.
This extension is optional, as publishers might not know the prior
gap gize, or there may not be a gap. If Prior Object ID Gap is not
present, the receiver cannot infer any information about the
existence of prior objects (see Section 2.1).
This extension can be added by the Original Publisher, but MUST NOT
be added by relays. This extension MAY be removed by relay when the
object in question is served via FETCH, and the gap that the
extension communicates is already communicated implicitly in the
FETCH response; it MUST NOT be modified or removed otherwise.
An Object MUST NOT contain more than one instance of this extension
header.
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12. Security Considerations
TODO: Expand this section, including subscriptions.
TODO: Describe Cache Poisoning attacks
12.1. Resource Exhaustion
Live content requires significant bandwidth and resources. Failure
to set limits will quickly cause resource exhaustion.
MOQT uses stream limits and flow control to impose resource limits at
the network layer. Endpoints SHOULD set flow control limits based on
the anticipated bitrate.
Endpoints MAY impose a MAX STREAM count limit which would restrict
the number of concurrent streams which an application could have in
flight.
The publisher prioritizes and transmits streams out of order.
Streams might be starved indefinitely during congestion. The
publisher and subscriber MUST cancel a stream, preferably the one
with the lowest priority, after reaching a resource limit.
12.2. Timeouts
Implementations are advised to use timeouts to prevent resource
exhaustion attacks by a peer that does not send expected data within
an expected time. Each implementation is expected to set its own
timeouts.
12.3. Relay security considerations
12.3.1. State maintenance
A Relay SHOULD have mechanisms to prevent malicious endpoints from
flooding it with PUBLISH_NAMESPACE or SUBSCRIBE_NAMESPACE requests
that could bloat data structures. It could use the advertised
MAX_REQUEST_ID to limit the number of such requests, or could have
application-specific policies that can reject incoming
PUBLISH_NAMESPACE or SUBSCRIBE_NAMESPACE requests that cause the
state maintenance for the session to be excessive.
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12.3.2. SUBSCRIBE_NAMESPACE with short prefixes
A Relay can use authorization rules in order to prevent subscriptions
closer to the root of a large prefix tree. Otherwise, if an entity
sends a relay a SUBSCRIBE_NAMESPACE message with a short prefix, it
can cause the relay to send a large volume of PUBLISH_NAMESPACE
messages. As churn continues in the tree of prefixes, the relay
would have to continue to send PUBLISH_NAMESPACE/
PUBLISH_NAMESPACE_DONE messages to the entity that had sent the
SUBSCRIBE_NAMESPACE.
TODO: Security/Privacy Considerations of MOQT_IMPLEMENTATION
parameter
13. IANA Considerations
TODO: fill out currently missing registries:
* MOQT ALPN values
* Setup parameters
* Non-setup Parameters - List which params can be repeated in the
table.
* Message types
* MOQ Extension headers - we wish to reserve extension types 0-63
for standards utilization where space is a premium, 64 - 16383 for
standards utilization where space is less of a concern, and 16384
and above for first-come-first-served non-standardization usage.
List which headers can be repeated in the table.
* MOQT Auth Token Type
TODO: register the URI scheme and the ALPN and grease the Extension
types
13.1. Authorization Token Alias Type
+======+===========+=================+
| Code | Name | Specification |
+======+===========+=================+
| 0x0 | DELETE | Section 9.2.2.1 |
+------+-----------+-----------------+
| 0x1 | REGISTER | Section 9.2.2.1 |
+------+-----------+-----------------+
| 0x2 | USE_ALIAS | Section 9.2.2.1 |
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+------+-----------+-----------------+
| 0x3 | USE_VALUE | Section 9.2.2.1 |
+------+-----------+-----------------+
Table 7
13.2. Message Parameters
+================+=====================+=================+
| Parameter Type | Parameter Name | Specification |
+================+=====================+=================+
| 0x02 | DELIVERY_TIMEOUT | Section 9.2.2.2 |
+----------------+---------------------+-----------------+
| 0x03 | AUTHORIZATION_TOKEN | Section 9.2.2.1 |
+----------------+---------------------+-----------------+
| 0x08 | EXPIRES | Section 9.2.2.6 |
+----------------+---------------------+-----------------+
| 0x09 | LARGEST_OBJECT | Section 9.2.2.7 |
+----------------+---------------------+-----------------+
| 0x10 | FORWARD | Section 9.2.2.8 |
+----------------+---------------------+-----------------+
| 0x20 | SUBSCRIBER_PRIORITY | Section 9.2.2.3 |
+----------------+---------------------+-----------------+
| 0x21 | SUBSCRIPTION_FILTER | Section 9.2.2.5 |
+----------------+---------------------+-----------------+
| 0x22 | GROUP_ORDER | Section 9.2.2.4 |
+----------------+---------------------+-----------------+
| 0x32 | NEW_GROUP_REQUEST | Section 9.2.2.9 |
+----------------+---------------------+-----------------+
Table 8
13.3. Extension Headers
+======+===============================+========+================+
| Type | Name | Scope | Specification |
+======+===============================+========+================+
| 0x02 | DELIVERY_TIMEOUT | Track | Section 11.1 |
+------+-------------------------------+--------+----------------+
| 0x04 | MAX_CACHE_DURATION | Track | Section 11.1.1 |
+------+-------------------------------+--------+----------------+
| 0x0B | IMMUTABLE_EXTENSIONS | Track, | Section 11.2 |
| | | Object | |
+------+-------------------------------+--------+----------------+
| 0x0E | DEFAULT_PUBLISHER_PRIORITY | Track | Section |
| | | | 11.1.1.1 |
+------+-------------------------------+--------+----------------+
| 0x22 | DEFAULT_PUBLISHER_GROUP_ORDER | Track | Section |
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| | | | 11.1.1.2 |
+------+-------------------------------+--------+----------------+
| 0x30 | DYNAMIC_GROUPS | Track | Section |
| | | | 11.1.1.3 |
+------+-------------------------------+--------+----------------+
| 0x3C | PRIOR_GROUP_ID_GAP | Object | Section 11.3 |
+------+-------------------------------+--------+----------------+
| 0x3E | PRIOR_OBJECT_ID_GAP | Object | Section 11.4 |
+------+-------------------------------+--------+----------------+
Table 9
13.4. Error Codes
13.4.1. Session Termination Error Codes
+============================+======+===============+
| Name | Code | Specification |
+============================+======+===============+
| NO_ERROR | 0x0 | Section 3.4 |
+----------------------------+------+---------------+
| INTERNAL_ERROR | 0x1 | Section 3.4 |
+----------------------------+------+---------------+
| UNAUTHORIZED | 0x2 | Section 3.4 |
+----------------------------+------+---------------+
| PROTOCOL_VIOLATION | 0x3 | Section 3.4 |
+----------------------------+------+---------------+
| INVALID_REQUEST_ID | 0x4 | Section 3.4 |
+----------------------------+------+---------------+
| DUPLICATE_TRACK_ALIAS | 0x5 | Section 3.4 |
+----------------------------+------+---------------+
| KEY_VALUE_FORMATTING_ERROR | 0x6 | Section 3.4 |
+----------------------------+------+---------------+
| TOO_MANY_REQUESTS | 0x7 | Section 3.4 |
+----------------------------+------+---------------+
| INVALID_PATH | 0x8 | Section 3.4 |
+----------------------------+------+---------------+
| MALFORMED_PATH | 0x9 | Section 3.4 |
+----------------------------+------+---------------+
| GOAWAY_TIMEOUT | 0x10 | Section 3.4 |
+----------------------------+------+---------------+
| CONTROL_MESSAGE_TIMEOUT | 0x11 | Section 3.4 |
+----------------------------+------+---------------+
| DATA_STREAM_TIMEOUT | 0x12 | Section 3.4 |
+----------------------------+------+---------------+
| AUTH_TOKEN_CACHE_OVERFLOW | 0x13 | Section 3.4 |
+----------------------------+------+---------------+
| DUPLICATE_AUTH_TOKEN_ALIAS | 0x14 | Section 3.4 |
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+----------------------------+------+---------------+
| VERSION_NEGOTIATION_FAILED | 0x15 | Section 3.4 |
+----------------------------+------+---------------+
| MALFORMED_AUTH_TOKEN | 0x16 | Section 3.4 |
+----------------------------+------+---------------+
| UNKNOWN_AUTH_TOKEN_ALIAS | 0x17 | Section 3.4 |
+----------------------------+------+---------------+
| EXPIRED_AUTH_TOKEN | 0x18 | Section 3.4 |
+----------------------------+------+---------------+
| INVALID_AUTHORITY | 0x19 | Section 3.4 |
+----------------------------+------+---------------+
| MALFORMED_AUTHORITY | 0x1A | Section 3.4 |
+----------------------------+------+---------------+
Table 10
13.4.2. REQUEST_ERROR Codes
+============================+======+===============+
| Name | Code | Specification |
+============================+======+===============+
| INTERNAL_ERROR | 0x0 | Section 9.8 |
+----------------------------+------+---------------+
| UNAUTHORIZED | 0x1 | Section 9.8 |
+----------------------------+------+---------------+
| TIMEOUT | 0x2 | Section 9.8 |
+----------------------------+------+---------------+
| NOT_SUPPORTED | 0x3 | Section 9.8 |
+----------------------------+------+---------------+
| MALFORMED_AUTH_TOKEN | 0x4 | Section 9.8 |
+----------------------------+------+---------------+
| EXPIRED_AUTH_TOKEN | 0x5 | Section 9.8 |
+----------------------------+------+---------------+
| DOES_NOT_EXIST | 0x10 | Section 9.8 |
+----------------------------+------+---------------+
| INVALID_RANGE | 0x11 | Section 9.8 |
+----------------------------+------+---------------+
| MALFORMED_TRACK | 0x12 | Section 9.8 |
+----------------------------+------+---------------+
| DUPLICATE_SUBSCRIPTION | 0x19 | Section 9.8 |
+----------------------------+------+---------------+
| UNINTERESTED | 0x20 | Section 9.8 |
+----------------------------+------+---------------+
| PREFIX_OVERLAP | 0x30 | Section 9.8 |
+----------------------------+------+---------------+
| INVALID_JOINING_REQUEST_ID | 0x32 | Section 9.8 |
+----------------------------+------+---------------+
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Table 11
13.4.3. PUBLISH_DONE Codes
+====================+======+===============+
| Name | Code | Specification |
+====================+======+===============+
| INTERNAL_ERROR | 0x0 | Section 9.15 |
+--------------------+------+---------------+
| UNAUTHORIZED | 0x1 | Section 9.15 |
+--------------------+------+---------------+
| TRACK_ENDED | 0x2 | Section 9.15 |
+--------------------+------+---------------+
| SUBSCRIPTION_ENDED | 0x3 | Section 9.15 |
+--------------------+------+---------------+
| GOING_AWAY | 0x4 | Section 9.15 |
+--------------------+------+---------------+
| EXPIRED | 0x5 | Section 9.15 |
+--------------------+------+---------------+
| TOO_FAR_BEHIND | 0x6 | Section 9.15 |
+--------------------+------+---------------+
| UPDATE_FAILED | 0x8 | Section 9.15 |
+--------------------+------+---------------+
| MALFORMED_TRACK | 0x12 | Section 9.15 |
+--------------------+------+---------------+
Table 12
13.4.4. Data Stream Reset Error Codes
+=======================+======+================+
| Name | Code | Specification |
+=======================+======+================+
| INTERNAL_ERROR | 0x0 | Section 10.4.3 |
+-----------------------+------+----------------+
| CANCELLED | 0x1 | Section 10.4.3 |
+-----------------------+------+----------------+
| DELIVERY_TIMEOUT | 0x2 | Section 10.4.3 |
+-----------------------+------+----------------+
| SESSION_CLOSED | 0x3 | Section 10.4.3 |
+-----------------------+------+----------------+
| UNKNOWN_OBJECT_STATUS | 0x4 | Section 10.4.3 |
+-----------------------+------+----------------+
| MALFORMED_TRACK | 0x12 | Section 10.4.3 |
+-----------------------+------+----------------+
Table 13
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Contributors
The original design behind this protocol was inspired by three
independent proposals: WARP [I-D.draft-lcurley-warp] by Luke Curley,
RUSH [I-D.draft-kpugin-rush] by Kirill Pugin, Nitin Garg, Alan
Frindell, Jordi Cenzano and Jake Weissman, and QUICR
[I-D.draft-jennings-moq-quicr-proto] by Cullen Jennings, Suhas
Nandakumar and Christian Huitema. The authors of those documents
merged their proposals to create the first draft of moq-transport.
The IETF MoQ Working Group received an enormous amount of support
from many people. The following people provided substantive
contributions to this document:
* Ali Begen
* Charles Krasic
* Christian Huitema
* Cullen Jennings
* James Hurley
* Jordi Cenzano
* Kirill Pugin
* Luke Curley
* Martin Duke
* Mike English
* Mo Zanaty
* Will Law
References
Normative References
[I-D.draft-ietf-quic-reliable-stream-reset]
Seemann, M. and K. Oku, "QUIC Stream Resets with Partial
Delivery", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-
quic-reliable-stream-reset-07, 14 June 2025,
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-quic-
reliable-stream-reset-07>.
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[QUIC] 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/rfc/rfc9000>.
[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/rfc/rfc2119>.
[RFC3629] Yergeau, F., "UTF-8, a transformation format of ISO
10646", STD 63, RFC 3629, DOI 10.17487/RFC3629, November
2003, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3629>.
[RFC3986] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and L. Masinter, "Uniform
Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax", STD 66,
RFC 3986, DOI 10.17487/RFC3986, January 2005,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3986>.
[RFC7301] Friedl, S., Popov, A., Langley, A., and E. Stephan,
"Transport Layer Security (TLS) Application-Layer Protocol
Negotiation Extension", RFC 7301, DOI 10.17487/RFC7301,
July 2014, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7301>.
[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/rfc/rfc8174>.
[RFC8615] Nottingham, M., "Well-Known Uniform Resource Identifiers
(URIs)", RFC 8615, DOI 10.17487/RFC8615, May 2019,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8615>.
[RFC9110] Fielding, R., Ed., Nottingham, M., Ed., and J. Reschke,
Ed., "HTTP Semantics", STD 97, RFC 9110,
DOI 10.17487/RFC9110, June 2022,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9110>.
[RFC9221] Pauly, T., Kinnear, E., and D. Schinazi, "An Unreliable
Datagram Extension to QUIC", RFC 9221,
DOI 10.17487/RFC9221, March 2022,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9221>.
[WebTransport]
Frindell, A., Kinnear, E., and V. Vasiliev, "WebTransport
over HTTP/3", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-
ietf-webtrans-http3-14, 20 October 2025,
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-
webtrans-http3-14>.
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Informative References
[I-D.draft-jennings-moq-quicr-proto]
Jennings, C. F., Nandakumar, S., and C. Huitema, "QuicR -
Media Delivery Protocol over QUIC", Work in Progress,
Internet-Draft, draft-jennings-moq-quicr-proto-01, 11 July
2022, <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-
jennings-moq-quicr-proto-01>.
[I-D.draft-kpugin-rush]
Pugin, K., Garg, N., Frindell, A., Ferret, J. C., and J.
Weissman, "RUSH - Reliable (unreliable) streaming
protocol", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-kpugin-
rush-03, 21 April 2025,
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-kpugin-rush-
03>.
[I-D.draft-lcurley-warp]
Curley, L., Pugin, K., Nandakumar, S., and V. Vasiliev,
"Warp - Live Media Transport over QUIC", Work in Progress,
Internet-Draft, draft-lcurley-warp-04, 13 March 2023,
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-lcurley-warp-
04>.
[I-D.ietf-webtrans-overview]
Kinnear, E. and V. Vasiliev, "The WebTransport Protocol
Framework", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-
webtrans-overview-11, 20 October 2025,
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-
webtrans-overview-11>.
[RFC6582] Henderson, T., Floyd, S., Gurtov, A., and Y. Nishida, "The
NewReno Modification to TCP's Fast Recovery Algorithm",
RFC 6582, DOI 10.17487/RFC6582, April 2012,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6582>.
[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/rfc/rfc9000>.
[RFC9438] Xu, L., Ha, S., Rhee, I., Goel, V., and L. Eggert, Ed.,
"CUBIC for Fast and Long-Distance Networks", RFC 9438,
DOI 10.17487/RFC9438, August 2023,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9438>.
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Appendix A. Change Log
RFC Editor's Note: Please remove this section prior to publication of
a final version of this document.
Issue and pull request numbers are listed with a leading octothorp.
A.1. Since draft-ietf-moq-transport-15
*Setup and Control Plane*
* Delta encode Key-Value-Pairs for Parameters and Headers (#1315)
* Use Request ID in PUBLISH_NAMESPACE_{DONE/CANCEL} (#1329)
* Remove delivery related params from TRACK_STATUS for Subscribers
(#1325)
* PUBLISH does not imply PUBLISH_NAMESPACE (#1364)
* Allow Start Location to decrease in SUBSCRIBE_UPDATE (#1323)
* Change SUBSCRIBE_UPDATE to REQUEST_UPDATE and expand ability to
update (#1332)
* Put SUBSCRIBE_NAMESPACE on a stream, make Namespaces and PUBLISH
independent (#1344)
* Require NAMESPACE before NAMESPACE_DONE (#1392)
* Allow the '*' or the empty namespace in SUBSCRIBE_NAMESPACE
(#1393)
* Relays match SUBSCRIBE to both Tracks and Namespaces (#1397)
* Clarify sending requests after sending GOAWAY (#1398)
* Add Retry Interval to REQUEST_ERROR (#1339)
* Add Extension Headers to PUBLISH, SUBSCRIBE_OK, and FETCH_OK
(#1374)
* Move track properties to extensions, scope parameters (#1390)
* Add LARGEST_OBJECT parameter to TRACK_STATUS (#1367)
* Duplicate subscription processing (#1341)
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* Address Track Name/Namespace edge cases (#1399)
*Data Plane Wire Format and Handling*
* Enable mixing datagrams with streams in one track (#1350)
* Clarify datagrams and subgroups (#1382)
* Redo the way we deal with missing Objects and Object Status
(#1342)
* Allow unknown ranges in a FETCH response (#1331)
* Do not reopen subgroups after delivery timeout or STOP_SENDING
(#1396)
* Clarify handling of unknown extensions (#1395)
* Clarify Delivery Timeout for datagrams (#1406)
* Disallow DELIVERY_TIMEOUT=0 (#1330)
* Malformed track due to multiple priorities for one subgroup
(#1317)
*Notable Editorial Changes*
* Subscribers can migrate networks too (#1410)
* Rename Version Specific Parameters to Message Parameters (#1411)
* Clarify valid joining fetch subscription states (#1363)
* Formatting names for logs (#1355)
* A Publisher might not use the congestion window (#1408)
A.2. Since draft-ietf-moq-transport-14
*Setup and Control Plane*
* Always use ALPN for version negotiation (#499)
* Consolidate all the Error Message types (#1159)
* Change MOQT IMPLEMENTATION code point to 0x7 (#1191)
* Add Forward to SUBSCRIBE_NAMESPACE (#1220)
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* Parameters for Group Order, Subscribe Priority and Subscription
Filter (redo) (#1273)
* REQUEST_OK message (#1274)
* Subscribe Update Acknowledgements (#1275)
* Disallow DELETE and USE_ALIAS in CLIENT_SETUP (#1277)
* Remove Expires field from SUBSCRIBE_OK (#1282)
* Make Forward a Parameter (#1283)
* Allow SUBSCRIBE_UPDATE to increase the end location (#1288)
* Add default port for raw QUIC (#1289)
* Unsubscribe Namespace should be linked to Subscribe Namespace
(#1292)
*Data Plane Wire Format and Handling*
* Fetch Object serialization optimization (#949)
* Make default PUBLISHER PRIORITY a parameter, optional in Subgroup/
Datagram (#1056)
* Allow datagram status with object ID=0 (#1197)
* Disallow object extension headers in all non-Normal status objects
(#1266)
* Objects for malformed track must not be cached (#1290)
* Remove NO_OBJECTS fetch error code (#1303)
* Clarify what happens when max_cache_duration parameter is omitted
(#1287)
*Notable Editorial Changes*
* Rename Request ID field in MAX_REQUEST_ID (#1250)
* Define and draw subscription state machine (#1296)
* Omitting a subgroup object necessitates reset (#1295)
* Define duplication rules for header extensions (#1293)
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* Clarify joining fetch end location (#1286)
A.3. Since draft-ietf-moq-transport-13
*Setup and Control Plane*
* Add an AUTHORITY parameter (#1058)
* Add a free-form SETUP parameter identifying the implementation
(#1114)
* Add a Request ID to SUBSCRIBE_UDPATE (#1106)
* Indicate which params can appear PUBLISH* messages (#1071)
* Add TRACK_STATUS to the list of request types affected by GOAWAY
(#1105)
*Data Plane Wire Format and Handling*
* Delta encode Object IDs within Subgroups (#1042)
* Use a bit in Datagram Type to convey Object ID = 0 (#1055)
* Corrected missed code point updates to Object Datagram Status
(#1082)
* Merge OBJECT_DATAGRAM and OBJECT_DATAGRAM_STATUS description
(#1179)
* Objects are not schedulable if flow-control blocked (#1054)
* Clarify DELIVERY_TIMEOUT reordering computation (#1120)
* Receiving unrequested Objects (#1112)
* Clarify End of Track (#1111)
* Malformed tracks apply to FETCH (#1083)
* Remove early FIN from the definition of malformed tracks (#1096)
* Prior Object ID Gap Extension header (#939)
* Add Extension containing immutable extensions (#1025)
*Relay Handling*
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* Explain FETCH routing for relays (#1165)
* MUST for multi-publisher relay handling (#1115)
* Filters don't (usually) determine the end of subscription (#1113)
* Allow self-subscriptions (#1110)
* Explain Namespace Prefix Matching in more detail (#1116)
*Explanatory*
* Explain Modularity of MOQT (#1107)
* Explain how to resume publishing after losing state (#1087)
*Major Editorial Changes*
* Rename ANNOUNCE to PUBLISH_NAMESPACE (#1104)
* Rename SUBSCRIBE_DONE to PUBLISH_DONE (#1108)
* Major FETCH Reorganization (#1173)
* Reformat Error Codes (#1091)
A.4. Since draft-ietf-moq-transport-12
* TRACK_STATUS_REQUEST and TRACK_STATUS have changed to directly
mirror SUBSCRIBE/OK/ERROR (#1015)
* SUBSCRIBE_ANNOUNCES was renamed back to SUBSCRIBE_NAMESPACE
(#1049)
A.5. Since draft-ietf-moq-transport-11
* Move Track Alias from SUBSCRIBE to SUBSCRIBE_OK (#977)
* Expand cases FETCH_OK returns Invalid Range (#946) and clarify
fields (#936)
* Add an error code to FETCH_ERROR when an Object status is unknown
(#825)
* Rename Latest Object to Largest Object (#1024) and clarify what to
do when it's incomplete (#937)
* Explain Malformed Tracks and what to do with them (#938)
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* Allow End of Group to be indicated in a normal Object (#1011)
* Relays MUST have an upstream subscription to send SUBSCRIBE_OK
(#1017)
* Allow AUTHORIZATION TOKEN in CLIENT_SETUP, SERVER_SETUP and other
fixes (#1013)
* Add PUBLISH for publisher initiated subscriptions (#995) and fix
the PUBLISH codepoints (#1048, #1051)
A.6. Since draft-ietf-moq-transport-10
* Added Common Structure definitions - Location, Key-Value-Pair and
Reason Phrase
* Limit lengths of all variable length fields, including Track
Namespace and Name
* Control Message length is now 16 bits instead of variable length
* Subscribe ID became Request ID, and was added to most control
messages. Request ID is used to correlate OK/ERROR responses for
ANNOUNCE, SUBSCRIBE_NAMESPACE, and TRACK_STATUS. Like Subscribe
ID, Request IDs are flow controlled.
* Explain rules for caching in more detail
* Changed the SETUP parameter format for even number parameters to
match the Object Header Extension format
* Rotated SETUP code points
* Added Parameters to TRACK_STATUS and TRACK_STATUS_REQUEST
* Clarified how subscribe filters work
* Added Next Group Filter to SUBSCRIBE
* Added Forward flag to SUBSCRIBE
* Renamed FETCH_OK field to End and clarified how to set it
* Added Absolute Joining Fetch
* Clarified No Error vs Invalid Range FETCH_ERROR cases
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* Use bits in SUBGROUP_HEADER and DATAGRAM* types to compress
subgroup ID and extensions
* Coalesced END_OF_GROUP and END_OF_TRACK_AND_GROUP status
* Objects that Do Not Exist cannot have extensions when sent on the
wire
* Specified error codes for resetting data streams
* Defined an Object Header Extension for communicating a known Group
ID gap
* Replaced AUTHORIZATION_INFO with AUTHORIZATION_TOKEN, which has
more structure, compression, and additional Auth related error
codes (#760)
Authors' Addresses
Suhas Nandakumar
Cisco
Email: snandaku@cisco.com
Victor Vasiliev
Google
Email: vasilvv@google.com
Ian Swett (editor)
Google
Email: ianswett@google.com
Alan Frindell (editor)
Meta
Email: afrind@meta.com
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