[Live-devel] RTSP REDIRECT

[Ross Finlayson]

>Does anybody know if it is possible to send a REDIRECT rtsp message 
>from the RTSPServer?

Our RTSP server implementation currently does not implement any 
server->client requests (including "REDIRECT").  Implementing such 
requests is a low priority (in part because I think that 
server->client requests are generally a bad idea).


>My custom Rtsp Server implementation process raw meg4 element 
>streams from other network devices, and presents these streams 
>through the Live555.  Some of the network devices implement a custom 
>initiation protocol (for which I am streaming successfully from), 
>and some also present a rtsp service (also based on live555).  For 
>this second scenario I would like to return with a REDIRECT message 
>when the device source has a RTSP server running.

A better (cleaner and more portable) solution for your second case 
would be for your server to simply relay the initial RTSP "DESCRIBE" 
request on to your back-end server, and let it handle this request 
(and all subsequent requests, which would also get relayed).  If you 
do this, then the client will be able to treat this like a normal 
RTSP protocol exchange (and therefore will not need to implement 
"REDIRECT" either).

To do this, you would need to modify our RTSP server implementation 
(in particular the "RTSPClientSession" class) to handle the TCP 
relaying.

The only drawback with this approach is that you would end up with 
two TCP connections for each client session: one connection between 
the client and the front-end server, and another connection between 
the front-end and back-end server.  In your case, this is probably 
OK, though, because the  front-end server is going to stay in 
existence at least as long as the back-end server.  (The actual 
RTP/RTCP UDP packets can come directly from the back-end server, and 
would not need to be relayed, unless you're doing RTP-over-TCP.)
-- 

Ross Finlayson
Live Networks, Inc.
http://www.live555.com/