Making the first mile as reliable as the last mile: SRT support is now GA

In late 2020, the pandemic led to a boom in live video driven by COVID-19, highlighting the need for increased reliability of source video sent to us - the "first mile". During this time, the "first mile" and "last mile" internet connections became the same networks. The explosive growth in live streaming has slowed back to pre-pandemic levels, but some changes have been made permanently during the pandemic. Live streaming is now more accessible than ever, with content creators generating live content on unreliable networks. SRT (Secure Reliable Transport) and RIST are emerging protocols designed to make live ingest more reliable. SRT is a modern, open-source contribution protocol developed by Haivision that allows for more reliable transmission of video over less reliable networks compared to protocols like RTMP. It works differently from RTMP at the core, relying on protocol-level acknowledgment to handle data loss or reordering. SRT is great when live streaming from an unreliable network and can be used for no extra cost. Using SRT over HEVC allows users to reduce the bitrate of the stream that they send to Mux, or to increase the visual quality without increasing the bitrate, all enabling a better experience for viewers.