RIST - Reliable Internet Streaming Transport
RIST is supported in Nimble Streamer
What is RIST?

Reliable Internet Streaming Transport (RIST) is a UDP-based transport technology designed to provide advanced streaming performance on unreliable networks. Developed via a standards-based approach, RIST offers an open, interoperable, and technically sound solution for low latency live video streaming over networks with less robust infrastructure. The combination of interoperability and innovation makes RIST unique. Specifications laid out by the group of experts allows for RIST implementations to be compatible with one another while giving vendors freedom to implement innovative modifications into their own versions.Relying on RIST specifications, users can ensure that their streams will be interoperable. In addition to its flexibility, RIST provides better control over buffering and caching issues which are key components in providing reliable streaming performance.
RIST in Nimble Streamer
Nimble Streamer is a great choice for streaming live video over unreliable networks, as it provides full support for the RIST protocol. If you're interested in trying out this powerful technology, check out the comprehensive setup instructions for Nimble Streamer and gain first-hand experience with its range of capabilities.
Nimble Streamer supports the below when it comes to RIST.
- Both Push and Listen publishing modes are supported
- Both Listen and Pull receive modes can be used to get RIST streams for further processing.
- Multiple streams can be sent via single RIST channel
- Multiple Pull-mode clients can be supported when working in "Listen" mode.
- Mux rate can be set correctly - Nimble Streamer has 100% PCR accuracy, 0ns PCR drift and PCR interval <20 ms according to StreamGuru.
This is typically used for precise testing of channel throughput. - AES 128 bit encryption provides stream security
- You can use Nimble Streamer API to get RIST sender and receiver statuses.
Check full setup instructions.
Installation and usage
Currently RIST is available only on Ubuntu 18.04+.
To start using RIST in Nimble Streamer, users will need to do the following:
- Install Nimble Streamer if you haven't done it yet, or upgrade it to latest version.
- Add following rep into /etc/apt/sources.list
For Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic Beaver:deb http://nimblestreamer.com/ubuntu bionic/
For Ubuntu 18.10 Cosmic Cuttlefish and 19.04 Disco Dingo:deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic universe
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-updates universe
deb http://nimblestreamer.com/ubuntu bionic/
For Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa:deb http://nimblestreamer.com/ubuntu focal/
For Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish run:sudo bash -c 'echo -e "deb http://nimblestreamer.com/ubuntu jammy/" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/nimble.list'
- Run:
For Ubuntu 20.04 and earlier:wget -q -O - http://nimblestreamer.com/gpg.key | sudo apt-key add -
For Ubuntu 22.04:wget -q -O - http://nimblestreamer.com/gpg.key | sudo tee /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/nimble.asc
- Run:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nimble-rist
sudo service nimble restart - Follow RIST setup instructions article to set up RIST streaming in all modes using WMSPanel control web service.
Related Nimble Streamer features
Nimble Streamer covers wide variety of live streaming scenarios so RIST can be used as an element in complex delivery scenarios.
- Live Transcoder allows processing incoming streams to change the content according to your business logic.
This includes decoding, applying various filters and encoding. All setup is performed via drag-n-drop web UI. - Process incoming streams via SRT, RTMP, NDI, WebRTC, RTSP, MPEG-TS and HLS.
- Produce RTMP, RTSP, MPEG-TS, HLS, MPEG-DASH, Icecast and SRT outgoing streams.
- Hot swap capabilities like Emergency hot swap and Failover hot swap allow switching between source origin and substitute streams with no glitches or artifacts. These features are available for RIST once you enable instant inactivity disconnect for MPEGTS-based streams.
- Use DVR feature set to record incoming live streams and provide further playback via MPEG-DASH and HLS.