The history of streaming told through protocols

Streaming is the lifeblood of modern-day entertainment and communications. But the permeation of streaming is a relatively recent phenomenon. To understand where the streaming industry lies today, we must look back to the 90s and the development of the first streaming protocols. 

In this whitepaper we’ll walk through a chronology of the streaming protocols that have paved the way for this multi-billion-dollar industry. We discuss the development of each protocol and the latest developments fueling the streaming industry today.

Streaming industry overview

The global video-on-demand (VoD) market is forecast to grow from $230.6 billion in 2026 to $855.9 billion in 2035, at a compound annual growth rate of 15.7%.

One of the largest segments in streaming is Subscription-Video-Streaming-on-Demand (SVOD). The SVOD market is projected to achieve a market volume of $123.68 billion and attract 1.78 billion users by the end of 2030.

Likewise, research points towards a surge in ad-supported-video-on-demand (AVOD) revenues in the coming years, with the market expected to reach $226.573 million by 2030. The global live streaming market is also growing rapidly, forecast to reach a value of $345.13 billion by 2030.

Low barriers to entry, ease of accessibility, and mobile device penetration globally are driving demand for streaming services like never before. Testament to the industry’s success, prominent players in the streaming industry (think Netflix, YouTube, Twitch, and communications platforms like Skype and Zoom) quickly became household names.

Now, the market is becoming increasingly monopolized. In December 2025, Netflix announced its planned acquisition of Warner Bros., including film and television studios HBO and HBO Max. With a deal valuation of $82.7 billion, this is a massive consolidation of streaming media power, embedding industry hierarchies and signalling that highly scaled content libraries and production capacities matter more than ever.

But none of this would have been possible without the foundational frameworks that allow devices to communicate over the internet: streaming protocols.

What are streaming protocols?

Streaming protocols define the standards and methods for transmitting multimedia content over the internet from one device to another. They function as regulatory blueprints, standardizing the rules for how media files are encoded, transmitted, and decoded, ensuring a seamless delivery and playback experience for the end user.

For example, most video and audio streaming protocols segment data into small chunks that can be transmitted more easily. This process relies on codecs (programs that compress or decompress media files) and is how content is delivered and played back to end-users.

There are many different streaming protocols each with unique strengths and weaknesses. This whitepaper explores each of the major streaming protocols chronologically, piecing together a comprehensive history of this industry's impressive evolution over time.

It will cover the following streaming protocols:

• Real Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP)

• Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP)

• HTTP Live Streaming (HLS)

• HTTP Dynamic Streaming (HDS)

• Microsoft Smooth Streaming (MSS)

• Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (MPEG-DASH)

• Web Real-Time Communications (WebRTC)

• Secure Reliable Transport (SRT)

• High Efficiency Streaming Protocol (HESP)

• WebRTC-HTTP Ingestion Protocol (WHIP)

• Media over QUIC (MoQ)

The 90s - RTMP and RTSP

It was during the 90s that the key technologies that would change the trajectory of the streaming industry first emerged. This was a decade of many firsts. The first live video stream, the first live streaming media player, and even the first presidential webcast.

But the most notable development of the decade was the release of two seminal streaming protocols: Real Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP) and Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP).

Real Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP)

In 1996, Macromedia (the multimedia software company that would later be acquired by Adobe) developed RTMP. The protocol was developed as a Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) technology to connect the original Flash Player to dedicated media servers and facilitate live streaming over the internet.

How does RTMP work?

RTMP sent files in an Adobe flash format called a Small Web Format (SWF) and could deliver audio, video, and text data across devices. The ability to transmit data from a server to a video player in real-time was game changing.

After the discontinuation of Flash in 2020, RTMP fell out of favor for general use. But the protocol is still used due to some notable advantages including low latency and reduced overheads. These days the protocol is used principally for delivering encoded content to media servers, streaming platforms, and social media platforms.

Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP)

Around the same time that Macromedia was developing RTMP, a first draft for another protocol was being submitted. RTSP was developed under a partnership between RealNetworks, Netscape, and Columbia University, offering something that was truly innovative at the time; VCR-like capabilities enabling users to control the viewing experience with the ability to play, pause, and rewind media streams.

Netscape’s official 1998 Standards Track memo for RTSP defines the protocol as “an application-level protocol for control over the delivery of data with real-time properties”.

The memo continues:

“RTSP provides an extensible framework to enable controlled, on-demand delivery of real-time data, such as audio and video. Sources of data can include both live data feeds and stored clips. This protocol is intended to control multiple data delivery sessions, provide a means for choosing delivery channels such as UDP, multicast UDP and TCP, and provide a means for choosing delivery mechanisms based upon RTP”.

How does RTSP work?

After being published in 1998, RTSP quickly became the leading protocol for audio and video streaming. And though it has since been eclipsed by HTTP-based technologies, it is still widely adopted across use cases including IP cameras, robotics, and IoT devices due to its simple design, compatibility across devices, and low latency.

RTMP and RTSP were leading protocols of their time but have been largely replaced by HTTP-based and adaptive bitrate streaming technologies which are easier to scale to the demands of large broadcasts.

The 00s - HLS, HDS, and MSS

At the turn of the millennium live streaming and VoD started gaining even more traction. This was the decade that some of the biggest names in the industry were born. YouTube hit the scene in 2005, followed by Twitch (then justin.tv) in 2006, and Netflix in 2007. As access to the internet and mobile technology widened, internet video streaming hit the masses.

In 2005, Adobe acquired Macromedia and Adobe Flash fast became a mainstay of video streaming. But in 2010, three years after the iconic release of the first iPhone, Steve Jobs announced that Apple would cease to support the platform.

In his open letter, Thoughts on Flash, Jobs writes:

“I wanted to jot down some of our thoughts on Adobe’s Flash products so that customers and critics may better understand why we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. Adobe has characterized our decision as being primarily business driven – they say we want to protect our App Store – but in reality it is based on technology issues. Adobe claims that we are a closed system, and that Flash is open, but in fact the opposite is true.”

Needless to say, Apple had been working on its own proprietary format - HLS.

HTTP Live Streaming (HLS)

HLS is an adaptive HTTP-based streaming protocol that was first released in 2009. HLS breaks video and audio data into chunks which are compressed and transmitted over HTTP to the viewer’s device. The protocol was initially only supported by iOS but has since become widely supported across different browsers and devices. When Adobe Flash was phased out in 2020, HLS became the streaming protocol of choice.

How does HLS work?

HTTP Dynamic Streaming (HDS)

Adobe was also working on its own HTTP-based protocol. HDS, also developed in 2009, is a type of adaptive bitrate streaming protocol.

How does HDS work?

HDS delivers MP4 content over HTTP for live or on-demand streaming. The protocol was developed for use with Adobe products like Flash Player and Air and is not supported by Apple devices. The adoption of the HDS protocol has been less widespread than HLS and, after Flash was discontinued and the number of people with HDS compatible devices declined, the protocol fell out of mainstream use.

Microsoft Smooth Streaming (MSS)

While the Apple-Adobe debacle raged, another protocol was entering the fray. In October of 2008, Microsoft announced that a new HTTP-based adaptive streaming extension would be added to its Internet Information Server (ISS). MSS facilitated the targeted delivery of HD content by detecting bandwidth conditions, CPU utilization, and playback window resolution.

Microsoft put its new streaming technology to the test at a series of major sporting events including the 2008 Beijing Olympics, 2009 Wimbledon Championship, and 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, during which NBC sports used the technology to deliver streams to 15.8 million users - a testament to the merits of HTTP streaming for large-scale live event streaming.

The 2010s - MPEG-DASH, SRT, HESP, and WebRTC

It was in the 2010s that live-streaming finally had its moment of glory. Video consumption on mobile devices was up and the appetite for live video started to grow exponentially.

In 2011 Twitch as we know it today was founded. In October 2012, a YouTube live of Felix Baumgartner’s skydive amounted 8 million simultaneous views. By March 2015, Periscope (a dedicated video streaming app) launched, allowing users to share live videos directly from their smartphones. And by 2016, Facebook Live was rolled out for all users.

Alongside the growth of live streaming, this was the decade when on-demand streaming services grew to prominence. With even more kids on the block, it became clear that the battle between proprietary streaming protocols had to be resolved. In 2010, a group of major streaming and media companies including Microsoft, Netflix, Google, and Adobe, got together to create an industry streaming standard. And by 2012, MPEG-DASH was born.

Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (MPEG-DASH)

MPEG-DASH is a type of adaptive bitrate streaming that enables the streaming of media content delivered from HTTP web servers. It was designed by the Moving Pictures Expert Group as an alternative to proprietary streaming protocols like HLS. The aim was to create an industry standard for adaptive streaming.

From a technical standpoint, the protocol works in a similar way to HLS (by segmenting content into small chunks and decoding the data for playback). The key difference is that MPEG-DASH is not proprietary, meaning it operates as an open-source standard. The protocol is also codec agnostic (unlike HLS which specifies the use of certain codecs).

How does MPEG-DASH work?

Web Real-Time Communications (WebRTC)

After Google acquired Global IP Solutions in 2010, the company developed WebRTC, an open-source project for browser-real-time communications. The first version of WebRTC was created by Ericsson Labs in 2011.

The framework was designed to facilitate real-time peer-to-peer communication between browsers enabling voice, video, and data to be shared. However, even though WebRTC was designed as a one-to-one communication solution, many streaming platforms are now trying to achieve one-to-many broadcasts using the protocol.

The WebRTC framework was foundational in advancing real-time voice, text, and video communications. Prior to its creation, platforms like Skype and Google Hangouts relied on native applications and plugins.

WebRTC implemented an open source, plugin-free framework for in-browser communication consisting of a JavaScript API and a suite of communication protocols. The protocol enabled developers to facilitate real-time communication within browser-based software, removing the need for intermediary servers.

How does WebRTC work?

2020 and beyond - ASP, ART, MRV2, HESP.live, WHIP, MoQ

Since 2020, streaming has become firmly embedded as a mainstay of modern life. On-demand streaming services have gone from novelty to an entertainment necessity for most, live streaming for work and education has become the norm, and the video game streaming market is thriving. Streaming has well and truly made it to the mainstream and new use cases such as digital fitness, live commerce, and telehealth are taking the world by storm.

Live and on-demand fitness

Exercise in the home is a growing trend with live and on-demand fitness platforms like Les Mills, ClassPass, and Wellbeats making it easier to work out from home. 

The global virtual fitness market is projected to reach $106.4 billion by 2030, with the on-demand market (pre-recorded videos) segment accounting for the largest market share. 

Live commerce

Livestream e-commerce involves the promotion and selling of products and services in real time on digital platforms such as TikTok. 

Asia is a strong market in this sector. In China, live commerce is on track to surpass one trillion USD by the end of 2026. Major platforms include Taobao Live, Douyin, and Kuaishou.

Telehealth 

Technology is meeting healthcare head on and more people are choosing to access healthcare services remotely via virtual check-ups using their computers, tablets, or smartphones. 

The global telehealth market size was estimated at $123.26 billion in 2024 and is expected to reach $455.27 billion by the end of 2030.  

At present, web-based delivery dominates the market with an overall revenue share of 48.5% in 2025. 

The specification draws on contributions from engineers across the industry and in 2025, Cloudflare launched the first global MoQ relay network on its existing edge infrastructure, marking an important milestone toward practical adoption. The protocol is still being developed as an open standard by the IETF and a final standard is expected to be released in 2026.

Using QUIC’s UDP-based multiplexing, low-latency connection setup, and congestion control, MoQ delivers audio, video, and timed metadata efficiently and securely across unpredictable network conditions. Unlike traditional HTTP-based streaming approaches (such as HLS and DASH) that rely on chunked delivery and often incur multi-second delays, MoQ can achieve sub-second latency.

How does QUIC work?

With global audiences expecting streaming platforms to work seamlessly and 24/7, MoQ marks a significant milestone for developers and streaming platforms by enabling reliable, scalable, ultra-low latency live and interactive media.