moq-dev · kixelated · Jun 16, 2026 · Jun 19, 2026 · Jun 21, 2026 · Jun 21, 2026
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+---
+layout: "@/layouts/global.astro"
+title: "MoQ is for the Cars"
+author: kixelated
+description: MoQ is like Lightning McQueen. But it's a live networking protocol, not an animatronic sports car in a fictional movie produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures.
+cover: "/blog/cars2/queen.png"
+date: 2026-06-08
+---
+
+# MoQ for the Cars
+sup
+
+This is an unexpected collaboration with Fastly.
+They liked the MoQ blog posts and actually sponsored me to make a [hinged version](https://www.fastly.com/blog/moq-in-the-fast-lane), cross-posted to their **OFFICIAL BLOG**.
+Go read that one instead if my usual cringe is too much.
+
+Roses are red. 🌹
+Sports cars be too. 🚗
+MoQ be fast. 🚀
+Cars 2™ is a 2011 American animated comedy film produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures.
+
+<figure>
+	![A hand-drawn doodle of a race car resembling Lightning McQueen, dark with green accents and a "69", labeled "it me"](/blog/cars2/queen.png)
+	<figcaption>starring Lightning McQueen, the devilishly handsome race car</figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+## Cars 2: Electric Boogaloo
+Lightning McQueen is racing around the track.
+The spectators in the stands are honking wild.
+**HONK HONK**
+
+But we don't care about the stans in the stands.
+We care about the cars in their garage?
+The ones willing to pay big bucks if we can transmit the **LOUD CARS DO CIRCLES** race over the internet.
+Or whatever currency cars use, IDK I'm not a lore expert.
+
+The answer for the last decade has been HLS/DASH.
+Split the media into fragments, anywhere from 0.5s to 4s long, and serve them over HTTP.
+It's boring but it works.
+
+But just like the Mini Cooper, [there are a few short-comings](https://moq.dev/blog/replacing-hls-dash).
+- Flushing media in batches **adds latency** (0.5s to 4s).
+- Network congestion causes head-of-line blocking and **the spinny boye**.
+- Every second of the spinny boye means **even more latency**.
+
+This is why I created MoQ while at Twitch.
+The goal was to make live streams more interactive (and less boring).
+**Stream frames, and occasionally drop instead of blocking.**
+
+High latency is for losers.
+I always finish first, just like Lightning McQueen.
+
+
+
+## MoQ for the Fans
+First, I wanted to address the SUV in the room.
+My previous blog post, [You Don't Need It](https://moq.dev/blog/you-dont-need-it/), mentioned that you don't need MoQ for high-quality content.
+It's true, but *as always*, there are exceptions to my shitty opinions.
+
+But before we disprove one shitty opinion, we need to prove another.
+**Racing is boring**.
+
+The video footage is **so boring** that the only thing separating two laps is a counter.
+Like yes, sometimes the car goes boom, but there's so much dead air.
+I postulate that you're watching to be part of the story **LIVE**, not to see every millisecond of lap 392 in the Toilet Bowl 500.
+
+And it might actually be a good use-case for MoQ.
+Because instead of buffering/pausing to load boring content, we can instead skip it to keep latency low.
+It keeps you in the action with **sub-second latency**.
+And milliseconds might be the difference between winning and losing.
+
+**FUN FACT**: Sports ~betting~ prediction markets are a thing. Degenerate users love lower latency.
+
+<figure>
+	![A hand-drawn speedometer with "Losing" and "Winning" at each end, the needle pushed past a marked "HLS/DASH limit"](/blog/cars2/speed2.png)
+	<figcaption>crank that dial</figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+And before you get your suspension in a twist, MoQ can still provide the same quality/latency you expect from HLS/DASH.
+We just lower the latency floor for the Lightning McQueens out there who want to **WIN**.
+
+
+## MoQ for the Cars
+I originally made MoQ [for the fans](/blog/distribution-at-twitch).
+But people keep running my code on the cars.
+[Or the boats](/blog/on-a-boat).
+
+TBH, this is the better use-case for MoQ.
+
+You might have pieced together that I don't watch racing (**boring**) outside of critically acclaimed movies for children.
+Starring Lightning McQueen and his goofy comrades, the cars go fast vroom vroom.
+But when I do see snippets of F1, the camera feeds from the cars are **awful**.
+
+Me, the uninformed dumbass, has a hunch that it's due to networking.
+There's going to be deadzones or interference or whatever around the track.
+We are bound by the laws of physics, even in the Cars 2 Cinematic Universe.
+
+> We no can send all bytes.
+\- Lightning McQueen (2011)
+
+**Boring protocols** like RTP drop packets/frames based on SLAs.
+The publisher gives up (re)transmitting a frame after ~100 milliseconds; then it's gone forever.
+This often shows up as artifacting or tearing or frozen video.
+
+But **the chad protocol** doesn't give up.
+
+MoQ publishers **prioritize transmitting the newer stuff** (in dependency order).
+The old stuff gets **queued in RAM** (up to a TTL).
+When bandwidth recovers, we can **backfill old footage** instead of losing it forever.
+
+Each MoQ subscriber independently decides how long to wait for each frame:
+- The **live stream** might wait for up to 1 second
+- The **instant relay** might wait for up to 10 seconds
+- The **VOD recording** might wait for up to 1 minute.
+
+So your real-time feed might be lossy af, but the VOD is pristine.
+
+<figure>
+	![A doodle contrasting a glitchy, crossed-out "Realtime" race car frame with a clean "Backfill" version of the same car](/blog/cars2/backfill.png)
+	<figcaption>If I ever own a racing team, it's going to be called The Backfill Boyes</figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+The packets may have given up. But Lightning McQueen never gives up.
+He always finishes first and the crowd goes **HONK HONK**.
+
+
+## MoQ for the Robots
+We're closer to the Cars Cinematic Universe than we want to admit.
+Humans are a dying breed.
+Like a pug on a hot day.
+**RIP us.**
+
+Enter the robots.
+They byte.
+And they need networking for their bleeps and bloops.
+It turns out that MoQ works for more than just media:
+- The speedometer? **A live stream**.
+- The steering wheel? **A live stream**.
+- The G force sensor as Lightning McQueen heroically crashes into a wall to save the day? **A live stream**.
+
+Seriously, there's nothing special about media.
+It's just delta encoded data.
+You can delta encode a lot of things, [even JSON](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc7386).
+Just like I delta encoded your mom last night.
+
+<figure>
+	![A doodle equation: a round stick figure plus the green MoQ cat logo equals a Lightning McQueen-style race car](/blog/cars2/mom.png)
+	<figcaption>yes, a ur mom joke in `<current_year>`</figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+Networks aren't infinite.
+So we split up media into tracks/groups/frames/packets so pieces can be dropped when needed.
+The reality is that some bytes are just less valuable than others.
+We can't all be Lightning McQueen.
+
+The hard part is putting humpty back together.
+That's why we use timestamps baybee, they tell us when stuff happened relative to other stuff.
+So do the same thing for metadata.
+Stamp that fellow, using the same clock as media, and send it over the same pipe.
+
+You can, and should, take the red pill and use MoQ for **EVERYTHING**.
+A single **cooperative** QUIC connection with: `controls > audio > metadata > video`
+
+**FUN FACT**: MoQ is already being used remotely to pilot drones over Starlink.
+One day we'll be able to remotely drive Lightning McQueen.
+
+And yes, this sounds simple but it's something WebRTC completely botches.
+You have to use a separate connection for metadata and timestamps aren't exposed in the browser.
+
+
+## MoQ for the Track
+We're not done yet.
+Sit back in your seat.
+Fasten that seatbelt.
+It's the law, and I'm the sheriff from the critically acclaimed movie Cars 2.
+
+Yeah I know the joke is overdone.
+Give me a pitty chuckle, we're almost done.
+
+If more than one broadcast studio wants footage of Lightning McQueen's tailpipe, we don't want to transmit multiple copies.
+Our satellite truck is expensive and has a limited bandwidth budget.
+
+And what if none of the broadcast studios actually want that hot, smokey, tailpipe footage?
+Do we even want to transmit it, or is it just a waste of bandwidth?
+With all of this data swirling around the track, there has to be some way to organize it.
+
+Enter stage right: **moq-relay**
+
+It's a simple proxy that connects **1 publisher** with **N subscribers** (per broadcast/track).
+When **moq-relay** instances connect to each other, they automatically form a cluster.
+It handles discovery, routing, and proxying.
+
+You can host it yourself [and/or pay me](https://pro.moq.dev). For example:
+- **Lightning McQueen** connects to a self-hosted moq-relay at `192.168.420.69`.
+- **moq-relay** is run with `--cluster-connect https://cdn.moq.dev/cars2`.
+- **Studio clients** (or a relay!) connects to `https://cdn.moq.dev/cars2`.
+
+Just like a tinder hookup, there's a match and now you're the sub.
+Any broadcasts published by Lightning McQueen are automatically available to all relays, potentially proxied through multiple hops.
+
+And only one copy is ever transmitted between each **moq-relay** instance, regardless of the number of downstream subscribers.
+This is known colloquially as "big deal" when flakey venue internet and expensive satellite trucks are involved.
-This is known colloquially as "big deal" when flakey venue internet and expensive satellite trucks are involved.
+This is known colloquially as "big deal" when flaky venue internet and expensive satellite trucks are involved.
-This is known colloquially as "big deal" when flakey venue internet and expensive satellite trucks are involved.
+This is known colloquially as "big deal" when flaky venue internet and expensive satellite trucks are involved.
+Run a self-hosted relay at each track, aggregate all of the feeds automatically, and publish them to a CDN.
+
+<figure>
+	![A diagram of one car publishing to a relay that fans out across a CDN of interconnected relays to many subscribers](/blog/cars2/fanout.png)
+	<figcaption>literally infinite viewers from a single, semi-reliable feed</figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+And there's no limit to the number of connections you can establish.
+[moq-lite](https://doc.moq.dev/concept/layer/moq-lite.html) routes each subscription over the shortest path.
+Go ahead, connect to `cdn.moq.dev` and `cloudflare.mediaoverquic.com` at the same time; they sit idle until someone subscribes.
+
+It's like swiping right on Lightning McQueen multiple times on alt accounts.
+Don't judge.
+
+
+## Disclaimer
+I hope you've realized by now that I haven't seen the critically acclaimed movie Cars 2.
+That poster of Lightning McQueen on my wall is just part of the gag.
+I stare at it quite often to keep up the ruse.
+
+Thanks again to Fastly for sponsoring this post.
+They just told me to write something about MoQ, so I did.
+No refunds.
+
+If you're interested in more Cars 2 lore, join the [fan club](https://discord.gg/FCYF3p99mr) or email me at `me@kixel.me`.
+
+Written by [@kixelated](mailto:meself@kixel.me).
+![@kixelated](/blog/avatar.png)