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MoQ Transport protocol

Media over QUIC (MoQ) Transport is an open protocol under development at the IETF that implements a publish/subscribe system over QUIC. A publisher sends named streams of data; subscribers request those streams by name; relays (CDN servers) sit between them and copy each stream to everyone who wants it without inspecting the data.

Key properties

  • Content-agnostic relays — relays never look inside forwarded data, so the same protocol carries live video, video calls, low-latency messaging, and other real-time workloads that previously required separate systems.
  • Named tracks under namespaces — publishers announce tracks; subscribers request by (namespace, track name).
  • QUIC transport — runs on the transport underlying HTTP/3, inheriting low-latency connection setup (0-RTT), multiplexing without head-of-line blocking, and connection migration.
  • No single company owns it — developed in the open at the IETF; will become a free public standard (RFC).

Draft evolution

  • draft-14 — first version Cloudflare supported on its global relay network; unauthenticated endpoints for protocol testing.
  • draft-16 (2026) — adds two features:
  • PUBLISH — publisher pushes a track to the relay before a viewer requests it, eliminating first-viewer latency (see patterns/publish-before-subscribe).
  • SUBSCRIBE_NAMESPACE — subscriber requests all tracks under a namespace (including tracks added later), removing per-track subscription overhead.

Standardisation

Seen in

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