Digital media delivery today relies on two powerful but separate approaches: scalable streaming and real-time conversation. Each one excels at a specific purpose, and understanding both reveals why MOQ represents a fundamental shift in how we may be building these applications in the future.
Let’s explore what makes the current landscape so divided, how MOQ aims to deliver a latency-tunable approach, and why this matters for anyone building media applications today.
Current Media Delivery: HLS/DASH vs WebRTC
Today, if you want to deliver media, you essentially choose between two architectural approaches depending on your use case and its inherent latency budget.
First is Scalable Streaming, dominated by protocols like HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) and DASH (Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP). This is the backbone of services like YouTube and Netflix. It relies on a technique called HTTP Adaptive Streaming (HAS), which basically consists of chopping content into small files and delivering them over standard HTTP through massive, globally distributed Content Delivery Networks (CDNs).
This architecture enables a reliable and cost-effective delivery to millions of viewers. Its design intentionally trades immediacy for scale and quality, resulting in latencies that are perfectly acceptable for streaming a movie, but unsuitable for real-time interaction.
For more interactive scenarios, such as sports streaming and live auctions, there are extensions such as LL-HLS and LL-DASH that provide reduced delays, but still aren’t at the level of our next contender in the media delivery landscape.
At the opposite end of the spectrum is the Real-Time Conversation, powered by WebRTC. This is the technology behind Google Meet, Discord, and other conversational apps. WebRTC is finely tuned for the ultra-low latency required for seamless, two-way interaction, supporting direct peer-to-peer connections and specialized media servers-based interactions.
While WebRTC has enabled an entire generation of interactive applications, scaling it to large broadcast audiences requires complex setup. This is due to its highly reliance on stateful server infrastructure that operates very differently from the simple, scalable CDNs that power the rest of the web.
This separation forces businesses to build and maintain two entirely different technology stacks—one for massive scale, and one for real-time speed. Until now.
MOQ Protocol: Unifying Real-Time and Scalable Streaming
MOQ represents the next evolutionary step in media delivery. It’s a new protocol designed to unify this divided landscape. Instead of forcing a choice between the distinct strengths of HLS/DASH and WebRTC, MOQ offers a single, flexible protocol that aims to provide the best of both worlds.
Imagine a future with a single infrastructure that gives you a “latency slider.” You could turn the dial down for WebRTC-like immediacy in a video conference, or turn it up for HLS-like scale during a global broadcast—all within one CDN-friendly architecture.
And while it started as “Media-over-QUIC”, the protocol has evolved to be completely data-agnostic (which is why the project is now simply called “MOQ”). MOQ goes beyond audio and video, supporting any real-time data stream, including IoT sensor data, live gaming inputs, collaborative document updates, and remote control commands.
MOQ Technology Stack: QUIC, WebTransport, and MOQT
MOQ’s power comes from its modern, layered technology stack, built from the network transport all the way up to the application content.
QUIC and WebTransport: MOQ’s Transport Layer
At the base is QUIC, a modern transport protocol that runs on top of UDP. QUIC reintroduces the reliability and security (with built-in TLS 1.3) of TCP but without its limitations. Its most critical feature is the use of multiple, independent streams within a single connection.
QUIC also eliminates the “head-of-line blocking” issue, so a lost packet for a low-priority video enhancement stream won’t delay the delivery of a critical audio packet on another.
WebTransport is the standardized browser API that acts as a bridge, giving web applications direct access to QUIC’s powerful multi-stream and datagram capabilities.
MOQT Protocol: Publish-Subscribe Architecture
Running on top of WebTransport/QUIC, MOQT is the core specification. It defines a simple publish-subscribe logic and an object model consisting of tracks, groups, and objects. Using a few core messages like PUBLISH, SUBSCRIBE, and FETCH, MOQT enables the efficient, cache-friendly movement of data across the network.
Streaming Formats and Content Layer
This is the topmost layer, which defines the actual content—how it’s encoded, packaged, and mapped to MOQT objects depending on the use case (i.e. video conferencing, streaming or chat). This layer also sets the policies for how content is discovered and subscribed to.
MOQT is a generic transport designed to work with any Streaming Format, keeping the core protocol simple and versatile. This layered approach enables a beautifully simple yet powerful architecture:
Different components implement different parts of the stack. Publishers and Subscribers need the full stack to produce and consume content. But Relays—the CDNs—only need to implement the stack up to the MOQT layer. They are intentionally blind to the media or data format, allowing them to act as simple, scalable, data-agnostic caches.
MOQ’s Killer Features: Low Latency Meets CDN Scale
This is where the technology translates into tangible benefits, making MOQ a compelling proposition for everyone involved in the media delivery space.
MOQ Unifies the Entire Delivery Spectrum
This is MOQ’s most powerful feature. It collapses the full range of data delivery into a single protocol, eliminating the need for separate, specialized stacks. One infrastructure can now power:
- Real-time & Conversational (< 500ms): Deliver video conferencing, cloud gaming, and remote control with the immediacy of WebRTC.
- Interactive Live Streaming (< 2s): Power sports betting, live auctions, and synchronized audience events where every second counts.
- Scalable Broadcasts (> 5s): Handle massive HLS/DASH-scale events with the cost-efficiency of traditional CDNs.
- On-Demand Content (VOD): Seamlessly serve cached files using the same protocol.
This unification enables architectural simplicity and operational efficiency. For development teams, it means one set of tools and expertise can address both scalable and low-latency use cases.
MOQ Has Built-in DVR and VOD
MOQ natively supports both live and historical data retrieval. A client can SUBSCRIBE to receive new objects as they are published (live streaming) or FETCH objects that have already been published (rewind, VOD, ad insertion).
Complex features, like allowing a user to join a meeting and automatically see the last 30 seconds of conversation, become a native function of the protocol, not a complex application-level hack.
MOQ Has Graceful Degradation
MOQ offers sophisticated ways to handle poor network conditions. For example, a 30 frames-per-second video stream can be split into two groups: a high-priority 15fps base layer and a lower-priority 15fps enhancement layer. In a network congestion event, the publisher simply stops forwarding the lower-priority group. The user experiences a fluid drop to 15fps instead of a jarring freeze or buffering wheel—a massive improvement in user experience.
MOQ Radically Simplifies Infrastructure
By design, MOQ allows us to move away from specialized media servers and leverage the vast, existing CDN infrastructure for real-time delivery at scale. This lowers costs, reduces complexity, and increases reliability.
MOQ Adoption Status and Timeline (2025-2026)
MOQ’s promise sounds compelling, but it’s important to understand that it is still taking shape.
- Standardization: MOQT is an active IETF draft, with a finalized RFC expected in 2026. Several other specifications that enable MOQ’s capabilities, such as WARP, LOC, and CAT-4-MOQT, are also in development.
- Adoption:
- Early open-source implementations like MOQtail already exist, and community engagement is growing.
- Browser support for the underlying WebTransport API is already strong, paving the way for easier adoption.
- CDNs providers, such as CloudFlare, are starting to add support for MOQ data transmission.
- The Road Ahead: There are still open areas of development, such as defining optimal congestion response policies and rate adaptation logic. This is a sign of a healthy, maturing protocol.
Future-Ready Real-Time: Leveraging Current and Emerging Protocols
The promise of MOQ is compelling, but the reality is that businesses need to build, scale, and innovate today. WebRTC remains the proven, production-ready solution for real-time communication, powering billions of connections across video conferencing, telehealth, live streaming, and interactive applications worldwide.
Your real-time strategy doesn’t have to choose between battle-tested technology and emerging innovation. At WebRTC.ventures, our team specializes in building scalable, low-latency communication solutions using the tools that work best for your needs right now. We’re also actively tracking MOQ’s development, testing implementations, and preparing architectural strategies that ensure your platform can evolve as the protocol ecosystem matures.
Whether you need WebRTC expertise today or want to understand how emerging protocols like MOQ might benefit your roadmap, we’re here to help you build solutions that deliver results now and remain adaptable for tomorrow. Contact us to discuss your real-time communication needs!
Related: Watch WebRTC Live #102: “MOQ Me, Don’t WebRTC Me” with Ali C. Begen
