Meta deploys Media over QUIC for Instagram Live ingest

Meta has begun deploying Media over QUIC (MoQ) for live video ingest on Instagram Live for both iOS and Android. MoQ is an emerging IETF standard designed to provide low-latency, scalable media delivery over the QUIC transport layer. This transition moves Meta from its internal RUSH protocol toward a shared open standard that supports both ingest and playback.

Technical details of MoQ deployment

• Uses moxygen, Meta's open-source MoQ library, for publisher and subscriber roles.
• Built on the mvfst QUIC stack.
• Implements a Track abstraction, which is an addressable stream of media objects.
• Utilizes relays that cache and forward objects without parsing the media payload.
• Enables tunable latency, allowing different subscribers to the same track to experience different delay levels.
• Employs an edge translation layer to convert MoQ frames to the legacy RUSH format for existing backend compatibility.

Why it matters

By moving from a proprietary protocol (RUSH) to an IETF standard (MoQ), Meta is contributing to a unified media transport ecosystem that can be used across different platforms and services.