The Secure Real-Time Media Flow Protocol (RTMFP) is a

protocol suite The protocol stack or network stack is an implementation of a computer networking protocol suite or protocol family. Some of these terms are used interchangeably but strictly speaking, the ''suite'' is the definition of the communication protoco ...

developed by Adobe Systems for encrypted, efficient

multimedia Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to tradi ...

delivery through both client-server and

peer-to-peer Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the network. They are said to form a peer-to-peer ...

models over the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a ''internetworking, network of networks'' that consists ...

. The protocol was originally proprietary, but was later opened up and is now published as .

Operation

RTMFP allows users of live, real‐time communications, such as

social networking service A social networking service or SNS (sometimes called a social networking site) is an online platform which people use to build social networks or social relationships with other people who share similar personal or career content, interests, ac ...

s and multi‐user games, to communicate directly with each other using their computer's microphone and webcam. RTMFP is a

system, but is only designed for direct end user to end user communication for real-time communication, not for file sharing between multiple peers using segmented downloading. Facebook uses this protocol in its Pipe application RTMFP enables direct, live, real‐time communication for applications such as audio and

video chat Videotelephony, also known as videoconferencing and video teleconferencing, is the two-way or multipoint reception and transmission of audio and video signals by people in different locations for real time communication.McGraw-Hill Concise Enc ...

and multi‐player games. RTMFP flows data between the end‐user clients and not the server, bandwidth is not being used at the server. RTMFP uses the

User Datagram Protocol In computer networking, the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) is one of the core communication protocols of the Internet protocol suite used to send messages (transported as datagrams in packets) to other hosts on an Internet Protocol (IP) networ ...

, (UDP) to send video and audio data over the Internet, so needs to handle missing, dropped, or out of order packets. RTMFP has two features that may help to mitigate the effects of connection errors. Rapid Connection Restore: Connections are re‐established quickly after brief outages. For example, when a

wireless network A wireless network is a computer network that uses wireless data connections between network nodes. Wireless networking is a method by which homes, telecommunications networks and business installations avoid the costly process of introducing c ...

connection experiences a dropout. After reconnection, the connection has full capabilities instantly. IP Mobility: Active network peer sessions are maintained even if a client changes to a new

IP address An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as that is connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication.. Updated by . An IP address serves two main functions: network interface ident ...

. For example, when a laptop on a wireless network is plugged into a wired connection and receives a new address.

Difference between RTMP and RTMFP

The principal difference is how the protocols communicate over the network. RTMFP is based on

(UDP), whereas Real-Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP) is based on

Transmission Control Protocol The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is one of the main protocols of the Internet protocol suite. It originated in the initial network implementation in which it complemented the Internet Protocol (IP). Therefore, the entire suite is common ...

(TCP). UDP‐based protocols have some specific advantages over TCP‐based protocols when delivering live

streaming media Streaming media is multimedia that is delivered and consumed in a continuous manner from a source, with little or no intermediate storage in network elements. ''Streaming'' refers to the delivery method of content, rather than the content i ...

, such as decreased latency and overhead, and greater tolerance for dropped or missing packets, at the cost of decreased reliability. Unlike RTMP, RTMFP also supports sending data directly from one

Adobe Flash Player Adobe Flash Player (known in Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Google Chrome as Shockwave Flash) is computer software for viewing multimedia contents, executing rich Internet applications, and streaming audio and video content created on the A ...

to another, without going through a server. A server‐side connection will always be required to establish the initial connection between the end‐users and can be used to provide server‐side data execution or gateways into other systems. The user of a Flash Media Server will also be required to authorize network address lookup and

NAT traversal Network address translation traversal is a computer networking technique of establishing and maintaining Internet protocol connections across gateways that implement network address translation (NAT). NAT traversal techniques are required for m ...

services for the clients to prevent Flash Player from being used in an unmanaged way.

Application-level multicast

Flash Player 10.0 allowed only one-to-one communication for P2P, but from 10.1 application-level

multicast In computer networking, multicast is group communication where data transmission is addressed to a group of destination computers simultaneously. Multicast can be one-to-many or many-to-many distribution. Multicast should not be confused wit ...

is allowed. Flash Player finds appropriate distribution route (

overlay network An overlay network is a computer network that is layered on top of another network. Structure Nodes in the overlay network can be thought of as being connected by virtual or logical links, each of which corresponds to a path, perhaps through ...

), and can distribute to the group, which is connected by P2P.

History

RTMFP's underlying protocols are the result of Adobe's acquisition of Amicima in 2006; strong architectural similarities exist between RTMFP and Amicima's GPL-licensed Secure Media Flow Protocol (MFP).

References

{{Adobe Flash Adobe software

Operation

Difference between RTMP and RTMFP

Application-level multicast

History

See also

References