RTP Congestion Control Feedback: Update from IETF 103 (Bangkok) Hackathon
23 December 2018
/ cc
I've just updated
our draft on RTP Congestion Control Feedback to address
feedback from Jonathan Lennox based on implementation experience
during the hackathon at the Bangkok IETF meeting.
A small group comprising Jonathan Lennox, Nils Ohlmeier, and Sergio
Mena spent some time during the IETF 103 Hackathon in Bangkok trying
to implement the RTP Congestion Control Feedback draft in libwebrtc,
specifically as used in Firefox; and in Vidyo’s proprietary codebase.
Perhaps not unexpectedly, they found some issues with the draft that
Jonathan reported to the AVTCORE mailing list, and that were than
discussed during the IETF meeting.
Reassuringly, the issues reported were all relatively minor. There
were no real technical changes required to the specification in
order to address them. Rather, the feedback highlighted why we need
implementation experience: corner cases that are easy to miss, or
that are hidden in vague text, must be clarified when implementing
a specification. Specifications written in English prose can be
imprecise, but code needs precision. A useful reminder, perhaps,
of the importance of both rough consensus and running code
in the standards process.