You can smoothly upgrade from standard streaming to Real-Time Streaming (RTS). If you are using standard streaming, you can enable RTS in the ApsaraVideo Live console to use the standard streaming and RTS services at the same time. If you fail to use RTS to play a stream, you can use standard streaming to play the stream. This ensures the reliability of your business. This topic describes the differences between RTS and standard streaming.

Differences

Item RTS Standard streaming
Streaming protocol Playback of streams over the Alibaba Real-Time Communication (ARTC) protocol, which is based on Web Real-Time Communication (WebRTC), is supported. Playback of streams over the Real-Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP), Flash Video (FLV), and HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) protocols is supported.
End-to-end latency Streams over ARTC are transmitted by using the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) protocol and have a latency of less than 1 second.
  • Streams over RTMP or FLV are transmitted by using the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) protocol and have a latency of more than 3 seconds.
  • Streams over HLS are transmitted by using the TCP protocol and have a latency of more than 6 seconds.
Resistance to poor networks RTS has a strong capability to perform under poor network conditions. You can smoothly play streams even at a packet loss rate of 30%. Standard streaming has a limited capability to perform under poor network conditions.
Compatibility
  • Native: RTS is compatible with iOS, Android, macOS, and Windows.
  • Web: The compatibility rate for devices is greater than 94%.
The compatibility of standard streaming varies based on the protocol.
Stuttering rate Compared with standard streaming, RTS significantly reduces the end-to-end latency, while keeping the stuttering rate unchanged or slightly lower.
Concurrency Tens of millions of concurrent streams are supported.

Scenarios

Type Scenario
RTS
  • Highly interactive scenarios: RTS is commonly used in e-commerce live streaming, group live streaming, education live streaming, and enterprise live streaming. The low latency and high interactivity of RTS help improve business conversion and user engagement.
  • Scenarios that require screen consistency among multiple viewers: RTS is also commonly used in live streaming of events. RTS allows audience to know situations in the field in real time and avoids screen inconsistency among the audience.
Standard streaming Weakly interactive scenarios: Standard streaming allows audience to watch streams. However, inconsistent screens may be shown to the audience due to different network conditions.