These docs are a work in progress. Some pages may be incomplete or change as we get ready for launch.

Streaming protocols

CeraLive uses a small set of protocols, each chosen for a specific job. Understanding what they are makes it easier to read your stats, troubleshoot connection issues, and understand what your device is doing.

SRT — the transport

Secure Reliable Transport is the protocol that carries your video from the device to the cloud. It’s designed for live video over the public internet: it recovers from packet loss automatically, keeps latency low, and encrypts the stream in transit.

SRT is what the device sends, what travels across your connections, and what the cloud receiver hands off to the platform. Everything else in the stack is built on top of it.

If you’re curious about SRT in depth, the SRT Alliance maintains the open specification and a library of technical resources.

SRTLA — bonding across connections

SRT Link Aggregation is the layer that makes CeraLive more than a standard encoder. It takes the single SRT stream from the device and spreads it across all your active connections at once: LTE modems, 5G, Wi-Fi, Ethernet.

Each connection carries a portion of the stream. The device continuously watches how each connection is performing and shifts more traffic toward the healthier ones. When a connection drops, the others absorb its share. When it recovers, it rejoins automatically.

The cloud receiver collects packets from all your connections and reassembles them into one clean stream. Your streaming platform never sees the individual links.

SRTLA is the reason CeraLive can stay live from a moving vehicle on consumer cellular.

RTMP — pushing to platforms

Real-Time Messaging Protocol is the protocol most streaming platforms use to receive streams. Twitch, YouTube, Kick, and most other destinations accept RTMP (or its encrypted variant, RTMPS).

CeraLive uses RTMP on the egress side: after your stream arrives at the cloud, the platform pushes it out to your configured destinations over RTMP. You don’t interact with RTMP directly. You configure your streaming destinations in the dashboard, and the platform handles the rest.

RTMP is a mature, widely supported protocol. It’s not designed for the kind of lossy, variable-bandwidth links that SRT handles on the contribution side, which is why CeraLive uses SRT and SRTLA to get your stream to the cloud, then RTMP to deliver it onward.

How they fit together

Device → SRT → SRTLA bonding → Cloud receiver → Platform → RTMP → Twitch / YouTube / Kick

SRT carries the video. SRTLA bonds it across your connections. RTMP delivers it to your platforms. Each protocol does one job, and they hand off cleanly to the next.