Performance evaluation of RTMP, RTSP and HLS protocols for IPTV in mobile networks

57% of mobile network traffic can be attributed to streaming video content, video streaming is a service that demands efficiency, reliability and network stability. In this article, we present a performance benchmark of three different video streaming protocols, RTMP, RTSP and HLS, in mobile networks. This evaluation focuses on three aspects: stability, mobile device battery life and resource consumption (CPU, RAM). The evaluation is carried out in the city of Guaranda in Ecuador, in this city the coverage of mobile networks is very variable, starting with the 4G network that does not have much coverage and the rest of the city uses between 3G and 2G, that makes the coverage along the city very changeable, which is optimal to carry out the proposed evaluation. The result was that the best protocol that can be used currently for mobile networks for the City of Guaranda, is the HLS, delivering a balance between the 3 points analyzed and the best performance.