Hello, Apple video engineers. According to the official documentation, HLS is built on HTTP and traditionally ran on top of TCP. However, with the introduction of HTTP/3, which uses QUIC (runs on top of UDP), I would like to clarify the following:
- Has the official HLS specification changed in a way that allows it to be considered UDP-based when using HTTP/3? And is it fair to say that HLS supports UDP since the transport can go over HTTP/3 and QUIC?
- Would it be more accurate to say that HLS remains HTTP-dependent, and the transport protocol (TCP or QUIC) only determines how HTTP requests are delivered?
My thoughts: Since HTTP/3 uses QUIC running over UDP, we still can't say that HLS supports UDP in a classical way, as it is introduced in RTP, RTSP, SRT.