Meta says Instagram Live uses Media over QUIC (MoQ) for live-video ingest on iOS and Android. Ingest is the path that carries a live stream into the service; Meta’s deployment changes that incoming path, while an edge translator lets its existing backend continue to use RUSH. The company described the rollout in an engineering post published October 12, 2026, after months of experimentation, and reported that MoQ matched RUSH on the streaming-quality indicators and reliability measures used for the rollout. Meta’s engineering post
How MoQ connects to Meta’s existing backend
The client-side MoQ publisher uses Meta’s moxygen library, integrated with its mvfst QUIC stack. At dedicated edge endpoints, Meta translates incoming MoQ frames into the RUSH format expected by the existing backend. That lets the ingest path change without requiring a backend rewrite at this stage.
Meta says server-side routing sends experiment-eligible broadcasts to MoQ-capable endpoints based on experiment-group membership. The company says it can resize the experiment in minutes. It also selects TCP or QUIC when a stream starts, based on which handshake completes first; Meta says some enterprise and carrier networks block or rate-limit UDP/443. When TCP is used, the current fallback relies on RUSH.
| Architecture area | Instagram Live ingest described by Meta | Next steps Meta describes |
| Backend handling | Edge endpoints translate MoQ frames into RUSH for the existing backend. | Native MoQ support in the backend. |
| Service scope | MoQ ingest for Instagram Live on iOS and Android. | Broader use across Meta apps. |
| Live-stream path | MoQ is used for ingest; the existing system handles downstream delivery and playback. | End-to-end live delivery and playback using MoQ. |
| TCP fallback | The current TCP fallback relies on RUSH. | A standardized QMUX fallback. |
What the IETF draft defines
The IETF’s Media over QUIC Transport (MOQT) draft describes a content-agnostic publish/subscribe protocol: publishers send objects in tracks, and subscribers receive them directly or through relays. It can run over QUIC or WebTransport. The draft defines the transport layer; formats for particular media determine how that content is packaged into objects. The IETF transport draft
As of October 12, 2026, the IETF listed draft-ietf-moq-transport-22 as an active Internet-Draft, last updated October 1, 2026, with an expiration date of April 4, 2027. The Media Over QUIC working group was active, and its page listed a planned December 2026 request to submit the publication/subscription protocol to the IESG. The IETF working-group page
Meta describes native MoQ backend support, broader use across its apps, end-to-end delivery and playback, and QMUX fallback as future work or exploration. In the current Instagram Live arrangement, the edge translator still connects MoQ ingest to the RUSH backend.
