WG Review: WebRTC Ingest Signaling over HTTPS (wish)

[The IESG <[e-mail]>]

A new IETF WG has been proposed in the Applications and Real-Time Area. The
IESG has not made any determination yet. The following draft charter was
submitted, and is provided for informational purposes only. Please send your
comments to the IESG mailing list ([e-mail]) by 2021-02-01.

WebRTC Ingest Signaling over HTTPS (wish)
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Current status: Proposed WG

Chairs:
  Alex Gouaillard <[e-mail]>
  Sean Turner <[e-mail]>

Assigned Area Director:
  Murray Kucherawy <[e-mail]>

Applications and Real-Time Area Directors:
  Barry Leiba <[e-mail]>
  Murray Kucherawy <[e-mail]>

Mailing list:
  Address: [e-mail]
  To subscribe: https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/wish
  Archive: https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/wish/

Group page: https://datatracker.ietf.org/group/wish/

Charter: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/charter-ietf-wish/

The WISH working group is chartered to specify a simple, extensible,
HTTPS-based signaling protocol to establish one-way WebRTC-based audiovisual
sessions between broadcasting tools and real-time media broadcast networks.

Background:

WebRTC defines a set of wire protocols for real-time media transmission, as
well as a profile of the Signaling Description Protocol (SDP) for setting up
and controlling the associated media streams. Because of its typical use
cases, and to increase overall flexibility, WebRTC did not specify a wire
protocol for exchanging SDP messages, leaving the creation of such protocols
up to the applications that use WebRTC. This works well when WebRTC clients
are vertically integrated with the servers they communicate with, as it
allows for rapid iteration of new features.

At the same time, the use of WebRTC as a mechanism for large-scale media
broadcast is gaining popularity, with companies such as Millicast, Caffeine,
Janus/Meetecho, Evercast, Wowza, Liveswitch, Antmedia, and Strivecast
deploying WebRTC-based media distribution networks. Unlike more vertically
integrated uses of WebRTC, these networks would benefit immensely from being
able to re-use the several broadcasting tools that have been developed over
time (such as Wirecast, OBS, Stretchcast, NewBlue Stream, XSplit, FFSplit,
Lightstream, vMix, and a host of other applications). To date, these media
distribution networks have employed their own proprietary signaling protocols
to establish the connection between broadcasting tools and the network,
generally requiring either bespoke software or customized modifications to
existing broadcasting tools.

With the large number of available tools and the growing number of real-time
media distribution networks, this ad-hoc approach to creating custom
protocols for establishing sessions clearly does not scale. The real-time
broadcasting ecosystem would benefit immensely from a single, shared protocol
to meet this goal.

Deliverables:

The product of this working group will be a specification for a simple,
extensible, HTTPS-based signaling protocol to establish one-way WebRTC-based
audiovisual sessions between broadcasting tools and real-time media broadcast
networks.

This working group will use existing HTTPS, WebRTC, and SDP mechanisms to the
extent possible. While no extensions to those core protocols is expected, the
working group may consider such extensions if they are necessary to meet the
requirements of broadcasting tools and networks. Any such work will be
coordinated with the HTTPBIS and/or MMUSIC working groups, as appropriate. 
Additionally, this working group will coordinate with HTTPBIS and HTTPAPI to
assure that the HTTP protocol is being used according to current best
practice.

While there may be other problems that the proposed mechanism may solve or
nearly solve, such as video display clients connecting to the egress of a
media delivery network, adding explicit protocol support for those use cases
is not in scope for the WISH working group.

Milestones:

  Dec 2021 - Submit web ingest signaling protocol to IESG for publication