Sometime in April the Internet crossed a major sound barrier. Researchers transferred 301 Tbps of data across a single standard optical fiber, the equivalent of transferring 1,800 4K movies over the internet in one second and 4.5 million times faster than the average home broadband speed today.
And to think, we used to consider a gigabit-per-second fast! At the rate things are going, we will all be ziplining live media across distance and space soon.
Not so fast. In order for the real world to catch up to those speeds—and by ‘real world’ we mean live-streaming audio or video between studios, sports venues, and cloud server farms—we’ll need a much more robust IP transport protocol.
Which brings us to RIST, or Reliable Internet Stream Transport, now found in our Blade 4 I/O units that make up the WheatNet IP audio network. RIST adds error correction and packet recovery to UDP multicasting, the IP transport layer for AoIP, streaming and other realtime media applications. So, while UDP multicasting enabled us to reduce WheatNet IP audio network packet timing to 1/4 msec for minimum latency across a local studio network, RIST now gives us the transport means to move AoIP traffic beyond the studio walls and across distances over the public internet, where links are less reliable and distance adds more delay.
RIST adjusts in realtime to achieve the lowest latency and fastest performance for a given link, whether it’s high-speed or slow-mo, and whether it’s closer to the target destination or several hops away. This lets you take advantage of the growing number of high-speed links that make it possible to stream at full audio bandwidth between your studio and a low-cost contribution network, for example. Yet, you can still get the best connection possible on existing, slower links when sharing realtime content between locations, venues, and studios.
RIST is why WheatNet IP audio networks can now move the highest possible quality audio in realtime over most any link at great distances; it’s also why we recently received a Radio World IBC 2024 Best of Show award for the Blade 4. It's as easy as opening a RIST stream session from the Blade 4 (or our streaming appliances or server software, which also have RIST) and establishing a low-latency, high-quality connection between the local IP address and an IP address on the far end.
RIST is based on established protocols widely adopted by the broadcast industry, including many specifications found in SMPTE 2022-1; it uses things like RTP sequencing to identify potential packet losses and multi-link bonding to guarantee media delivery over these public links.
By the way, our fourth generation Blade 4 also has optional OPUS codecs for streaming compressed audio as needed. You could say we’re also breaking a few sound barriers. Blade 4 is the only I/O unit in the industry that includes audio processing, codecs, mixing, routing, control, operating system and now RIST connectivity in one rack unit.
Company
600 Industrial Dr.
New Bern, NC 28562 USA
Main office +1 (252) 638-7000
Fax main office +1 (252) 637-1285
We are open Monday through Friday,
8:30 AM to 8:30 PM EST
Company
600 Industrial Dr.
New Bern, NC 28562 USA
Main office +1 (252) 638-7000
Fax main office +1 (252) 637-1285
We are open Monday through Friday,
9:00 AM to 5:30 PM EST
