Skip to main content
Standards

Network APIs for Connectivity Quality

5G-MAG tracks and contributes to the CAMARA open-source project (a Linux Foundation initiative developed with GSMA support), which defines network APIs that let media applications request and manage network resources. For the analysis, see the Technology page. For the release history of the CAMARA repositories, see the Release history.

5G-MAG's interest is media-specific: contribution and live production uplinks, and live distribution downlinks. The work centres on the CAMARA QoS and slicing APIs.

At a glance
  • CAMARA: a selection of the APIs that 5G-MAG analyses for media use cases, here Quality on Demand, Network Slice Booking, Connectivity Insights and Dedicated Networks; the Technology page lists all of them. Several are still pre-1.0.
  • Media focus: contribution and live production uplinks, and live distribution downlinks.

CAMARA​

CAMARA is an open-source initiative under the Linux Foundation with GSMA support to define, develop and test network APIs. 5G-MAG contributes CAMARA API analysis for media use cases, focusing on APIs such as the following (the Technology page lists all of them):

CAMARA APIWhat it does for media
Quality on Demand (QoD)Lets an application request a defined QoS profile (bandwidth, latency) for a session, for example a live contribution feed
Network Slice BookingReserves a dedicated network slice in advance for a planned event or production
Connectivity InsightsReports on likely network conditions so a workflow can adapt encoding or scheduling
Dedicated NetworksReserves some of the public network's resources as a dedicated network for a location and a time window, and controls which devices may use them

See the Technology page for detailed CAMARA API profiles.

How CAMARA is organised​

CAMARA is hosted by the Linux Foundation and works with the GSMA Operator Platform Group; GSMA Open Gateway is the commercial programme through which operators expose CAMARA-defined APIs. APIs are shipped in twice-yearly meta-releases (spring and autumn). The CAMARA API Design Guide defines the version types: a work-in-progress (wip) version cannot be released and is not usable by API consumers, a release-candidate version is an internal pre-release, and a public version (x.y.z) is for use in commercial contexts (CAMARA Commonalities main@b1a9f08 CAMARA-API-Design-Guide.md section 7.3). Several of the APIs 5G-MAG analyses are still pre-1.0 (v0/wip).