GRTN and XQUIC: Low‑Latency Multimedia Transmission Standards and Open‑Source QUIC Implementation

Recent advances in Chinese network communication standards and open‑source projects were highlighted by Alibaba (China) Co., Ltd. in collaboration with domestic academia. The GRTN (Interactive Low‑Latency Internet Multimedia Transmission System Requirements) international standard proposal was approved, and the self‑developed IETF QUIC library XQUIC was open‑sourced on January 7.

Interviewed experts Wu Pengqiang and Liu Yanmei explained the value of GRTN and XQUIC for interactive live streaming and stable video playback, emphasizing Alibaba’s focus on end‑user experience and technological innovation.

Key milestones include:

January 17‑28: GRTN proposal approved at the ITU meeting.

January 7: XQUIC library released as open source, offering multi‑path QUIC capabilities developed jointly by the DaTaobao team and the DAMO Academy XG Lab.

GRTN addresses the latency bottleneck of interactive live streaming by combining hierarchical and peer‑to‑peer network architectures, using a low‑latency UDP‑based RTC protocol, dynamic routing, edge computing, and bidirectional signaling to achieve sub‑second end‑to‑end delay.

Performance results show a 60.65% reduction in video stall rate and a 16.52% increase in throughput compared with traditional methods; the findings have been published for three consecutive years at ACM MobiCom.

XQUIC builds on the QUIC protocol, adding multi‑path support (MPQUIC) that improves bandwidth utilization, robustness, and deployment cost. Compared with kernel‑level solutions like MPTCP, MPQUIC offers user‑space deployment, high performance, low cost, and lightweight implementation.

Field tests demonstrate that MPQUIC reduces average short‑video segment download time by 15.03% in weak‑network conditions and cuts weak‑network latency by 25.28%, while supporting simultaneous Wi‑Fi and LTE usage in high‑mobility scenarios.

The technologies have been deployed across Alibaba’s ecosystem—including Taobao live, DingTalk, Youku, Lazada, and other platforms—serving thousands of domains and supporting e‑commerce live, video conferencing, online education, video calls, and cloud gaming.

Both GRTN and XQUIC contribute to China’s growing influence in international multimedia transmission standards, aiming to accelerate industry upgrades and broaden ecosystem participation.