What is SRTLA?
You want one dropped connection to never take your whole stream down. SRTLA is the well-known, off-the-shelf way to make that possible: SRT with a safety net, the ability to use several connections at once. Here is what it is, in plain English, and why Super Simple IRL built its own alternative instead.
The short version
SRTLA is SRT with a safety net. Plain SRT sends your stream over a single connection. SRTLA sends it over several at the same time and combines them into one steady stream. If one connection drops, the others quietly pick up the slack, so you stay live.
Why one connection is not enough
Plain SRT is reliable, but it still leans on a single connection. If that one connection hits a bad patch, a tunnel, a packed stadium, a stretch of countryside with no signal, your stream has nothing to fall back on.
Out in the real world, no single connection is dependable everywhere. So instead of trusting one, SRTLA uses several and lets them cover for each other.
How it works, briefly
- Your stream is split into pieces and sent across every connection you have at once.
- A relay on the other end catches all the pieces and puts them back together in order.
- If one connection weakens or drops, its share simply shifts to the others, live, with no interruption.
This combining of several connections into one stream is what people mean by bonding. For a fuller look at that idea, see what is bonding.
A simple example
Picture crossing a river on stepping stones. On plain SRT you have one line of stones. If a single stone is missing, you are stuck.
SRTLA gives you several lines of stones side by side. If one line has a gap, you just step across to another and keep moving. You get to the other side no matter what, because you were never relying on a single path.
Why it matters for IRL
- Fewer drops as you walk through dead spots, crowds and buildings.
- No backpack. Super Simple IRL bonds your connections right on your phone with SSTL, our own in-house transport, so there is no rig to carry.
- Cheap to start. A spare phone can be your second link instead of professional gear.
Ready to see how the three protocols compare? Read the difference between RTMP, SRT and SRTLA.
Frequently asked questions
What is SRTLA in simple terms?
SRTLA is SRT with the ability to use more than one connection at the same time. It spreads your stream across, say, mobile data and Wi-Fi, or the several modems in a backpack rig. If one of them drops, the others keep the stream going, so you stay live through dead spots.
What does SRTLA stand for?
SRT Link Aggregation. Link aggregation just means combining several connections into one. So SRTLA is SRT that can bond multiple connections together.
What is the difference between SRT and SRTLA?
SRT uses a single connection. SRTLA uses several at once and combines them, so a single network dropping does not take your stream down. That is the concept, bonding. Super Simple IRL delivers it with SSTL instead of SRTLA, a transport we built from scratch to recover from packet loss faster.
Do I need special gear for SRTLA?
No backpack rig needed for bonding in general, but note that Super Simple IRL does not run SRTLA on your phone. We built our own bonding transport, SSTL, from scratch, which does the same job better. You just need more than one connection to combine: mobile data plus Wi-Fi, or a second phone joined over a shared Wi-Fi network.