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rfc:rfc3550

Network Working Group H. Schulzrinne Request for Comments: 3550 Columbia University Obsoletes: 1889 S. Casner Category: Standards Track Packet Design

                                                          R. Frederick
                                                Blue Coat Systems Inc.
                                                           V. Jacobson
                                                         Packet Design
                                                             July 2003
        RTP: A Transport Protocol for Real-Time Applications

Status of this Memo

 This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the
 Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for
 improvements.  Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet
 Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state
 and status of this protocol.  Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

 Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2003).  All Rights Reserved.

Abstract

 This memorandum describes RTP, the real-time transport protocol.  RTP
 provides end-to-end network transport functions suitable for
 applications transmitting real-time data, such as audio, video or
 simulation data, over multicast or unicast network services.  RTP
 does not address resource reservation and does not guarantee
 quality-of-service for real-time services.  The data transport is
 augmented by a control protocol (RTCP) to allow monitoring of the
 data delivery in a manner scalable to large multicast networks, and
 to provide minimal control and identification functionality.  RTP and
 RTCP are designed to be independent of the underlying transport and
 network layers.  The protocol supports the use of RTP-level
 translators and mixers.
 Most of the text in this memorandum is identical to RFC 1889 which it
 obsoletes.  There are no changes in the packet formats on the wire,
 only changes to the rules and algorithms governing how the protocol
 is used.  The biggest change is an enhancement to the scalable timer
 algorithm for calculating when to send RTCP packets in order to
 minimize transmission in excess of the intended rate when many
 participants join a session simultaneously.

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 1] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

Table of Contents

 1.  Introduction ................................................   4
     1.1  Terminology ............................................   5
 2.  RTP Use Scenarios ...........................................   5
     2.1  Simple Multicast Audio Conference ......................   6
     2.2  Audio and Video Conference .............................   7
     2.3  Mixers and Translators .................................   7
     2.4  Layered Encodings ......................................   8
 3.  Definitions .................................................   8
 4.  Byte Order, Alignment, and Time Format ......................  12
 5.  RTP Data Transfer Protocol ..................................  13
     5.1  RTP Fixed Header Fields ................................  13
     5.2  Multiplexing RTP Sessions ..............................  16
     5.3  Profile-Specific Modifications to the RTP Header .......  18
          5.3.1  RTP Header Extension ............................  18
 6.  RTP Control Protocol -- RTCP ................................  19
     6.1  RTCP Packet Format .....................................  21
     6.2  RTCP Transmission Interval .............................  24
          6.2.1  Maintaining the Number of Session Members .......  28
     6.3  RTCP Packet Send and Receive Rules .....................  28
          6.3.1  Computing the RTCP Transmission Interval ........  29
          6.3.2  Initialization ..................................  30
          6.3.3  Receiving an RTP or Non-BYE RTCP Packet .........  31
          6.3.4  Receiving an RTCP BYE Packet ....................  31
          6.3.5  Timing Out an SSRC ..............................  32
          6.3.6  Expiration of Transmission Timer ................  32
          6.3.7  Transmitting a BYE Packet .......................  33
          6.3.8  Updating we_sent ................................  34
          6.3.9  Allocation of Source Description Bandwidth ......  34
     6.4  Sender and Receiver Reports ............................  35
          6.4.1  SR: Sender Report RTCP Packet ...................  36
          6.4.2  RR: Receiver Report RTCP Packet .................  42
          6.4.3  Extending the Sender and Receiver Reports .......  42
          6.4.4  Analyzing Sender and Receiver Reports ...........  43
     6.5  SDES: Source Description RTCP Packet ...................  45
          6.5.1  CNAME: Canonical End-Point Identifier SDES Item .  46
          6.5.2  NAME: User Name SDES Item .......................  48
          6.5.3  EMAIL: Electronic Mail Address SDES Item ........  48
          6.5.4  PHONE: Phone Number SDES Item ...................  49
          6.5.5  LOC: Geographic User Location SDES Item .........  49
          6.5.6  TOOL: Application or Tool Name SDES Item ........  49
          6.5.7  NOTE: Notice/Status SDES Item ...................  50
          6.5.8  PRIV: Private Extensions SDES Item ..............  50
     6.6  BYE: Goodbye RTCP Packet ...............................  51
     6.7  APP: Application-Defined RTCP Packet ...................  52
 7.  RTP Translators and Mixers ..................................  53
     7.1  General Description ....................................  53

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 2] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

     7.2  RTCP Processing in Translators .........................  55
     7.3  RTCP Processing in Mixers ..............................  57
     7.4  Cascaded Mixers ........................................  58
 8.  SSRC Identifier Allocation and Use ..........................  59
     8.1  Probability of Collision ...............................  59
     8.2  Collision Resolution and Loop Detection ................  60
     8.3  Use with Layered Encodings .............................  64
 9.  Security ....................................................  65
     9.1  Confidentiality ........................................  65
     9.2  Authentication and Message Integrity ...................  67
 10. Congestion Control ..........................................  67
 11. RTP over Network and Transport Protocols ....................  68
 12. Summary of Protocol Constants ...............................  69
     12.1 RTCP Packet Types ......................................  70
     12.2 SDES Types .............................................  70
 13. RTP Profiles and Payload Format Specifications ..............  71
 14. Security Considerations .....................................  73
 15. IANA Considerations .........................................  73
 16. Intellectual Property Rights Statement ......................  74
 17. Acknowledgments .............................................  74
 Appendix A.   Algorithms ........................................  75
 Appendix A.1  RTP Data Header Validity Checks ...................  78
 Appendix A.2  RTCP Header Validity Checks .......................  82
 Appendix A.3  Determining Number of Packets Expected and Lost ...  83
 Appendix A.4  Generating RTCP SDES Packets ......................  84
 Appendix A.5  Parsing RTCP SDES Packets .........................  85
 Appendix A.6  Generating a Random 32-bit Identifier .............  85
 Appendix A.7  Computing the RTCP Transmission Interval ..........  87
 Appendix A.8  Estimating the Interarrival Jitter ................  94
 Appendix B.   Changes from RFC 1889 .............................  95
 References ...................................................... 100
 Normative References ............................................ 100
 Informative References .......................................... 100
 Authors' Addresses .............................................. 103
 Full Copyright Statement ........................................ 104

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 3] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

1. Introduction

 This memorandum specifies the real-time transport protocol (RTP),
 which provides end-to-end delivery services for data with real-time
 characteristics, such as interactive audio and video.  Those services
 include payload type identification, sequence numbering, timestamping
 and delivery monitoring.  Applications typically run RTP on top of
 UDP to make use of its multiplexing and checksum services; both
 protocols contribute parts of the transport protocol functionality.
 However, RTP may be used with other suitable underlying network or
 transport protocols (see Section 11).  RTP supports data transfer to
 multiple destinations using multicast distribution if provided by the
 underlying network.
 Note that RTP itself does not provide any mechanism to ensure timely
 delivery or provide other quality-of-service guarantees, but relies
 on lower-layer services to do so.  It does not guarantee delivery or
 prevent out-of-order delivery, nor does it assume that the underlying
 network is reliable and delivers packets in sequence.  The sequence
 numbers included in RTP allow the receiver to reconstruct the
 sender's packet sequence, but sequence numbers might also be used to
 determine the proper location of a packet, for example in video
 decoding, without necessarily decoding packets in sequence.
 While RTP is primarily designed to satisfy the needs of multi-
 participant multimedia conferences, it is not limited to that
 particular application.  Storage of continuous data, interactive
 distributed simulation, active badge, and control and measurement
 applications may also find RTP applicable.
 This document defines RTP, consisting of two closely-linked parts:
 o  the real-time transport protocol (RTP), to carry data that has
    real-time properties.
 o  the RTP control protocol (RTCP), to monitor the quality of service
    and to convey information about the participants in an on-going
    session.  The latter aspect of RTCP may be sufficient for "loosely
    controlled" sessions, i.e., where there is no explicit membership
    control and set-up, but it is not necessarily intended to support
    all of an application's control communication requirements.  This
    functionality may be fully or partially subsumed by a separate
    session control protocol, which is beyond the scope of this
    document.
 RTP represents a new style of protocol following the principles of
 application level framing and integrated layer processing proposed by
 Clark and Tennenhouse [10].  That is, RTP is intended to be malleable

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 4] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 to provide the information required by a particular application and
 will often be integrated into the application processing rather than
 being implemented as a separate layer.  RTP is a protocol framework
 that is deliberately not complete.  This document specifies those
 functions expected to be common across all the applications for which
 RTP would be appropriate.  Unlike conventional protocols in which
 additional functions might be accommodated by making the protocol
 more general or by adding an option mechanism that would require
 parsing, RTP is intended to be tailored through modifications and/or
 additions to the headers as needed.  Examples are given in Sections
 5.3 and 6.4.3.
 Therefore, in addition to this document, a complete specification of
 RTP for a particular application will require one or more companion
 documents (see Section 13):
 o  a profile specification document, which defines a set of payload
    type codes and their mapping to payload formats (e.g., media
    encodings).  A profile may also define extensions or modifications
    to RTP that are specific to a particular class of applications.
    Typically an application will operate under only one profile.  A
    profile for audio and video data may be found in the companion RFC
    3551 [1].
 o  payload format specification documents, which define how a
    particular payload, such as an audio or video encoding, is to be
    carried in RTP.
 A discussion of real-time services and algorithms for their
 implementation as well as background discussion on some of the RTP
 design decisions can be found in [11].

1.1 Terminology

 The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
 "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
 document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14, RFC 2119 [2]
 and indicate requirement levels for compliant RTP implementations.

2. RTP Use Scenarios

 The following sections describe some aspects of the use of RTP.  The
 examples were chosen to illustrate the basic operation of
 applications using RTP, not to limit what RTP may be used for.  In
 these examples, RTP is carried on top of IP and UDP, and follows the
 conventions established by the profile for audio and video specified
 in the companion RFC 3551.

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 5] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

2.1 Simple Multicast Audio Conference

 A working group of the IETF meets to discuss the latest protocol
 document, using the IP multicast services of the Internet for voice
 communications.  Through some allocation mechanism the working group
 chair obtains a multicast group address and pair of ports.  One port
 is used for audio data, and the other is used for control (RTCP)
 packets.  This address and port information is distributed to the
 intended participants.  If privacy is desired, the data and control
 packets may be encrypted as specified in Section 9.1, in which case
 an encryption key must also be generated and distributed.  The exact
 details of these allocation and distribution mechanisms are beyond
 the scope of RTP.
 The audio conferencing application used by each conference
 participant sends audio data in small chunks of, say, 20 ms duration.
 Each chunk of audio data is preceded by an RTP header; RTP header and
 data are in turn contained in a UDP packet.  The RTP header indicates
 what type of audio encoding (such as PCM, ADPCM or LPC) is contained
 in each packet so that senders can change the encoding during a
 conference, for example, to accommodate a new participant that is
 connected through a low-bandwidth link or react to indications of
 network congestion.
 The Internet, like other packet networks, occasionally loses and
 reorders packets and delays them by variable amounts of time.  To
 cope with these impairments, the RTP header contains timing
 information and a sequence number that allow the receivers to
 reconstruct the timing produced by the source, so that in this
 example, chunks of audio are contiguously played out the speaker
 every 20 ms.  This timing reconstruction is performed separately for
 each source of RTP packets in the conference.  The sequence number
 can also be used by the receiver to estimate how many packets are
 being lost.
 Since members of the working group join and leave during the
 conference, it is useful to know who is participating at any moment
 and how well they are receiving the audio data.  For that purpose,
 each instance of the audio application in the conference periodically
 multicasts a reception report plus the name of its user on the RTCP
 (control) port.  The reception report indicates how well the current
 speaker is being received and may be used to control adaptive
 encodings.  In addition to the user name, other identifying
 information may also be included subject to control bandwidth limits.
 A site sends the RTCP BYE packet (Section 6.6) when it leaves the
 conference.

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 6] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

2.2 Audio and Video Conference

 If both audio and video media are used in a conference, they are
 transmitted as separate RTP sessions.  That is, separate RTP and RTCP
 packets are transmitted for each medium using two different UDP port
 pairs and/or multicast addresses.  There is no direct coupling at the
 RTP level between the audio and video sessions, except that a user
 participating in both sessions should use the same distinguished
 (canonical) name in the RTCP packets for both so that the sessions
 can be associated.
 One motivation for this separation is to allow some participants in
 the conference to receive only one medium if they choose.  Further
 explanation is given in Section 5.2.  Despite the separation,
 synchronized playback of a source's audio and video can be achieved
 using timing information carried in the RTCP packets for both
 sessions.

2.3 Mixers and Translators

 So far, we have assumed that all sites want to receive media data in
 the same format.  However, this may not always be appropriate.
 Consider the case where participants in one area are connected
 through a low-speed link to the majority of the conference
 participants who enjoy high-speed network access.  Instead of forcing
 everyone to use a lower-bandwidth, reduced-quality audio encoding, an
 RTP-level relay called a mixer may be placed near the low-bandwidth
 area.  This mixer resynchronizes incoming audio packets to
 reconstruct the constant 20 ms spacing generated by the sender, mixes
 these reconstructed audio streams into a single stream, translates
 the audio encoding to a lower-bandwidth one and forwards the lower-
 bandwidth packet stream across the low-speed link.  These packets
 might be unicast to a single recipient or multicast on a different
 address to multiple recipients.  The RTP header includes a means for
 mixers to identify the sources that contributed to a mixed packet so
 that correct talker indication can be provided at the receivers.
 Some of the intended participants in the audio conference may be
 connected with high bandwidth links but might not be directly
 reachable via IP multicast.  For example, they might be behind an
 application-level firewall that will not let any IP packets pass.
 For these sites, mixing may not be necessary, in which case another
 type of RTP-level relay called a translator may be used.  Two
 translators are installed, one on either side of the firewall, with
 the outside one funneling all multicast packets received through a
 secure connection to the translator inside the firewall.  The
 translator inside the firewall sends them again as multicast packets
 to a multicast group restricted to the site's internal network.

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 7] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 Mixers and translators may be designed for a variety of purposes.  An
 example is a video mixer that scales the images of individual people
 in separate video streams and composites them into one video stream
 to simulate a group scene.  Other examples of translation include the
 connection of a group of hosts speaking only IP/UDP to a group of
 hosts that understand only ST-II, or the packet-by-packet encoding
 translation of video streams from individual sources without
 resynchronization or mixing.  Details of the operation of mixers and
 translators are given in Section 7.

2.4 Layered Encodings

 Multimedia applications should be able to adjust the transmission
 rate to match the capacity of the receiver or to adapt to network
 congestion.  Many implementations place the responsibility of rate-
 adaptivity at the source.  This does not work well with multicast
 transmission because of the conflicting bandwidth requirements of
 heterogeneous receivers.  The result is often a least-common
 denominator scenario, where the smallest pipe in the network mesh
 dictates the quality and fidelity of the overall live multimedia
 "broadcast".
 Instead, responsibility for rate-adaptation can be placed at the
 receivers by combining a layered encoding with a layered transmission
 system.  In the context of RTP over IP multicast, the source can
 stripe the progressive layers of a hierarchically represented signal
 across multiple RTP sessions each carried on its own multicast group.
 Receivers can then adapt to network heterogeneity and control their
 reception bandwidth by joining only the appropriate subset of the
 multicast groups.
 Details of the use of RTP with layered encodings are given in
 Sections 6.3.9, 8.3 and 11.

3. Definitions

 RTP payload: The data transported by RTP in a packet, for
    example audio samples or compressed video data.  The payload
    format and interpretation are beyond the scope of this document.
 RTP packet: A data packet consisting of the fixed RTP header, a
    possibly empty list of contributing sources (see below), and the
    payload data.  Some underlying protocols may require an
    encapsulation of the RTP packet to be defined.  Typically one
    packet of the underlying protocol contains a single RTP packet,
    but several RTP packets MAY be contained if permitted by the
    encapsulation method (see Section 11).

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 8] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 RTCP packet: A control packet consisting of a fixed header part
    similar to that of RTP data packets, followed by structured
    elements that vary depending upon the RTCP packet type.  The
    formats are defined in Section 6.  Typically, multiple RTCP
    packets are sent together as a compound RTCP packet in a single
    packet of the underlying protocol; this is enabled by the length
    field in the fixed header of each RTCP packet.
 Port: The "abstraction that transport protocols use to
    distinguish among multiple destinations within a given host
    computer.  TCP/IP protocols identify ports using small positive
    integers." [12] The transport selectors (TSEL) used by the OSI
    transport layer are equivalent to ports.  RTP depends upon the
    lower-layer protocol to provide some mechanism such as ports to
    multiplex the RTP and RTCP packets of a session.
 Transport address: The combination of a network address and port
    that identifies a transport-level endpoint, for example an IP
    address and a UDP port.  Packets are transmitted from a source
    transport address to a destination transport address.
 RTP media type: An RTP media type is the collection of payload
    types which can be carried within a single RTP session.  The RTP
    Profile assigns RTP media types to RTP payload types.
 Multimedia session: A set of concurrent RTP sessions among a
    common group of participants.  For example, a videoconference
    (which is a multimedia session) may contain an audio RTP session
    and a video RTP session.
 RTP session: An association among a set of participants
    communicating with RTP.  A participant may be involved in multiple
    RTP sessions at the same time.  In a multimedia session, each
    medium is typically carried in a separate RTP session with its own
    RTCP packets unless the the encoding itself multiplexes multiple
    media into a single data stream.  A participant distinguishes
    multiple RTP sessions by reception of different sessions using
    different pairs of destination transport addresses, where a pair
    of transport addresses comprises one network address plus a pair
    of ports for RTP and RTCP.  All participants in an RTP session may
    share a common destination transport address pair, as in the case
    of IP multicast, or the pairs may be different for each
    participant, as in the case of individual unicast network
    addresses and port pairs.  In the unicast case, a participant may
    receive from all other participants in the session using the same
    pair of ports, or may use a distinct pair of ports for each.

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 9] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

    The distinguishing feature of an RTP session is that each
    maintains a full, separate space of SSRC identifiers (defined
    next).  The set of participants included in one RTP session
    consists of those that can receive an SSRC identifier transmitted
    by any one of the participants either in RTP as the SSRC or a CSRC
    (also defined below) or in RTCP.  For example, consider a three-
    party conference implemented using unicast UDP with each
    participant receiving from the other two on separate port pairs.
    If each participant sends RTCP feedback about data received from
    one other participant only back to that participant, then the
    conference is composed of three separate point-to-point RTP
    sessions.  If each participant provides RTCP feedback about its
    reception of one other participant to both of the other
    participants, then the conference is composed of one multi-party
    RTP session.  The latter case simulates the behavior that would
    occur with IP multicast communication among the three
    participants.
    The RTP framework allows the variations defined here, but a
    particular control protocol or application design will usually
    impose constraints on these variations.
 Synchronization source (SSRC): The source of a stream of RTP
    packets, identified by a 32-bit numeric SSRC identifier carried in
    the RTP header so as not to be dependent upon the network address.
    All packets from a synchronization source form part of the same
    timing and sequence number space, so a receiver groups packets by
    synchronization source for playback.  Examples of synchronization
    sources include the sender of a stream of packets derived from a
    signal source such as a microphone or a camera, or an RTP mixer
    (see below).  A synchronization source may change its data format,
    e.g., audio encoding, over time.  The SSRC identifier is a
    randomly chosen value meant to be globally unique within a
    particular RTP session (see Section 8).  A participant need not
    use the same SSRC identifier for all the RTP sessions in a
    multimedia session; the binding of the SSRC identifiers is
    provided through RTCP (see Section 6.5.1).  If a participant
    generates multiple streams in one RTP session, for example from
    separate video cameras, each MUST be identified as a different
    SSRC.
 Contributing source (CSRC): A source of a stream of RTP packets
    that has contributed to the combined stream produced by an RTP
    mixer (see below).  The mixer inserts a list of the SSRC
    identifiers of the sources that contributed to the generation of a
    particular packet into the RTP header of that packet.  This list
    is called the CSRC list.  An example application is audio
    conferencing where a mixer indicates all the talkers whose speech

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 10] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

    was combined to produce the outgoing packet, allowing the receiver
    to indicate the current talker, even though all the audio packets
    contain the same SSRC identifier (that of the mixer).
 End system: An application that generates the content to be sent
    in RTP packets and/or consumes the content of received RTP
    packets.  An end system can act as one or more synchronization
    sources in a particular RTP session, but typically only one.
 Mixer: An intermediate system that receives RTP packets from one
    or more sources, possibly changes the data format, combines the
    packets in some manner and then forwards a new RTP packet.  Since
    the timing among multiple input sources will not generally be
    synchronized, the mixer will make timing adjustments among the
    streams and generate its own timing for the combined stream.
    Thus, all data packets originating from a mixer will be identified
    as having the mixer as their synchronization source.
 Translator: An intermediate system that forwards RTP packets
    with their synchronization source identifier intact.  Examples of
    translators include devices that convert encodings without mixing,
    replicators from multicast to unicast, and application-level
    filters in firewalls.
 Monitor: An application that receives RTCP packets sent by
    participants in an RTP session, in particular the reception
    reports, and estimates the current quality of service for
    distribution monitoring, fault diagnosis and long-term statistics.
    The monitor function is likely to be built into the application(s)
    participating in the session, but may also be a separate
    application that does not otherwise participate and does not send
    or receive the RTP data packets (since they are on a separate
    port).  These are called third-party monitors.  It is also
    acceptable for a third-party monitor to receive the RTP data
    packets but not send RTCP packets or otherwise be counted in the
    session.
 Non-RTP means: Protocols and mechanisms that may be needed in
    addition to RTP to provide a usable service.  In particular, for
    multimedia conferences, a control protocol may distribute
    multicast addresses and keys for encryption, negotiate the
    encryption algorithm to be used, and define dynamic mappings
    between RTP payload type values and the payload formats they
    represent for formats that do not have a predefined payload type
    value.  Examples of such protocols include the Session Initiation
    Protocol (SIP) (RFC 3261 [13]), ITU Recommendation H.323 [14] and
    applications using SDP (RFC 2327 [15]), such as RTSP (RFC 2326
    [16]).  For simple

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 11] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

    applications, electronic mail or a conference database may also be
    used.  The specification of such protocols and mechanisms is
    outside the scope of this document.

4. Byte Order, Alignment, and Time Format

 All integer fields are carried in network byte order, that is, most
 significant byte (octet) first.  This byte order is commonly known as
 big-endian.  The transmission order is described in detail in [3].
 Unless otherwise noted, numeric constants are in decimal (base 10).
 All header data is aligned to its natural length, i.e., 16-bit fields
 are aligned on even offsets, 32-bit fields are aligned at offsets
 divisible by four, etc.  Octets designated as padding have the value
 zero.
 Wallclock time (absolute date and time) is represented using the
 timestamp format of the Network Time Protocol (NTP), which is in
 seconds relative to 0h UTC on 1 January 1900 [4].  The full
 resolution NTP timestamp is a 64-bit unsigned fixed-point number with
 the integer part in the first 32 bits and the fractional part in the
 last 32 bits.  In some fields where a more compact representation is
 appropriate, only the middle 32 bits are used; that is, the low 16
 bits of the integer part and the high 16 bits of the fractional part.
 The high 16 bits of the integer part must be determined
 independently.
 An implementation is not required to run the Network Time Protocol in
 order to use RTP.  Other time sources, or none at all, may be used
 (see the description of the NTP timestamp field in Section 6.4.1).
 However, running NTP may be useful for synchronizing streams
 transmitted from separate hosts.
 The NTP timestamp will wrap around to zero some time in the year
 2036, but for RTP purposes, only differences between pairs of NTP
 timestamps are used.  So long as the pairs of timestamps can be
 assumed to be within 68 years of each other, using modular arithmetic
 for subtractions and comparisons makes the wraparound irrelevant.

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 12] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

5. RTP Data Transfer Protocol

5.1 RTP Fixed Header Fields

 The RTP header has the following format:
  0                   1                   2                   3
  0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
 |V=2|P|X|  CC   |M|     PT      |       sequence number         |
 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
 |                           timestamp                           |
 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
 |           synchronization source (SSRC) identifier            |
 +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
 |            contributing source (CSRC) identifiers             |
 |                             ....                              |
 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
 The first twelve octets are present in every RTP packet, while the
 list of CSRC identifiers is present only when inserted by a mixer.
 The fields have the following meaning:
 version (V): 2 bits
    This field identifies the version of RTP.  The version defined by
    this specification is two (2).  (The value 1 is used by the first
    draft version of RTP and the value 0 is used by the protocol
    initially implemented in the "vat" audio tool.)
 padding (P): 1 bit
    If the padding bit is set, the packet contains one or more
    additional padding octets at the end which are not part of the
    payload.  The last octet of the padding contains a count of how
    many padding octets should be ignored, including itself.  Padding
    may be needed by some encryption algorithms with fixed block sizes
    or for carrying several RTP packets in a lower-layer protocol data
    unit.
 extension (X): 1 bit
    If the extension bit is set, the fixed header MUST be followed by
    exactly one header extension, with a format defined in Section
    5.3.1.
 CSRC count (CC): 4 bits
    The CSRC count contains the number of CSRC identifiers that follow
    the fixed header.

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 13] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 marker (M): 1 bit
    The interpretation of the marker is defined by a profile.  It is
    intended to allow significant events such as frame boundaries to
    be marked in the packet stream.  A profile MAY define additional
    marker bits or specify that there is no marker bit by changing the
    number of bits in the payload type field (see Section 5.3).
 payload type (PT): 7 bits
    This field identifies the format of the RTP payload and determines
    its interpretation by the application.  A profile MAY specify a
    default static mapping of payload type codes to payload formats.
    Additional payload type codes MAY be defined dynamically through
    non-RTP means (see Section 3).  A set of default mappings for
    audio and video is specified in the companion RFC 3551 [1].  An
    RTP source MAY change the payload type during a session, but this
    field SHOULD NOT be used for multiplexing separate media streams
    (see Section 5.2).
    A receiver MUST ignore packets with payload types that it does not
    understand.
 sequence number: 16 bits
    The sequence number increments by one for each RTP data packet
    sent, and may be used by the receiver to detect packet loss and to
    restore packet sequence.  The initial value of the sequence number
    SHOULD be random (unpredictable) to make known-plaintext attacks
    on encryption more difficult, even if the source itself does not
    encrypt according to the method in Section 9.1, because the
    packets may flow through a translator that does.  Techniques for
    choosing unpredictable numbers are discussed in [17].
 timestamp: 32 bits
    The timestamp reflects the sampling instant of the first octet in
    the RTP data packet.  The sampling instant MUST be derived from a
    clock that increments monotonically and linearly in time to allow
    synchronization and jitter calculations (see Section 6.4.1).  The
    resolution of the clock MUST be sufficient for the desired
    synchronization accuracy and for measuring packet arrival jitter
    (one tick per video frame is typically not sufficient).  The clock
    frequency is dependent on the format of data carried as payload
    and is specified statically in the profile or payload format
    specification that defines the format, or MAY be specified
    dynamically for payload formats defined through non-RTP means.  If
    RTP packets are generated periodically, the nominal sampling
    instant as determined from the sampling clock is to be used, not a
    reading of the system clock.  As an example, for fixed-rate audio
    the timestamp clock would likely increment by one for each
    sampling period.  If an audio application reads blocks covering

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 14] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

    160 sampling periods from the input device, the timestamp would be
    increased by 160 for each such block, regardless of whether the
    block is transmitted in a packet or dropped as silent.
    The initial value of the timestamp SHOULD be random, as for the
    sequence number.  Several consecutive RTP packets will have equal
    timestamps if they are (logically) generated at once, e.g., belong
    to the same video frame.  Consecutive RTP packets MAY contain
    timestamps that are not monotonic if the data is not transmitted
    in the order it was sampled, as in the case of MPEG interpolated
    video frames.  (The sequence numbers of the packets as transmitted
    will still be monotonic.)
    RTP timestamps from different media streams may advance at
    different rates and usually have independent, random offsets.
    Therefore, although these timestamps are sufficient to reconstruct
    the timing of a single stream, directly comparing RTP timestamps
    from different media is not effective for synchronization.
    Instead, for each medium the RTP timestamp is related to the
    sampling instant by pairing it with a timestamp from a reference
    clock (wallclock) that represents the time when the data
    corresponding to the RTP timestamp was sampled.  The reference
    clock is shared by all media to be synchronized.  The timestamp
    pairs are not transmitted in every data packet, but at a lower
    rate in RTCP SR packets as described in Section 6.4.
    The sampling instant is chosen as the point of reference for the
    RTP timestamp because it is known to the transmitting endpoint and
    has a common definition for all media, independent of encoding
    delays or other processing.  The purpose is to allow synchronized
    presentation of all media sampled at the same time.
    Applications transmitting stored data rather than data sampled in
    real time typically use a virtual presentation timeline derived
    from wallclock time to determine when the next frame or other unit
    of each medium in the stored data should be presented.  In this
    case, the RTP timestamp would reflect the presentation time for
    each unit.  That is, the RTP timestamp for each unit would be
    related to the wallclock time at which the unit becomes current on
    the virtual presentation timeline.  Actual presentation occurs
    some time later as determined by the receiver.
    An example describing live audio narration of prerecorded video
    illustrates the significance of choosing the sampling instant as
    the reference point.  In this scenario, the video would be
    presented locally for the narrator to view and would be
    simultaneously transmitted using RTP.  The "sampling instant" of a
    video frame transmitted in RTP would be established by referencing

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 15] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

    its timestamp to the wallclock time when that video frame was
    presented to the narrator.  The sampling instant for the audio RTP
    packets containing the narrator's speech would be established by
    referencing the same wallclock time when the audio was sampled.
    The audio and video may even be transmitted by different hosts if
    the reference clocks on the two hosts are synchronized by some
    means such as NTP.  A receiver can then synchronize presentation
    of the audio and video packets by relating their RTP timestamps
    using the timestamp pairs in RTCP SR packets.
 SSRC: 32 bits
    The SSRC field identifies the synchronization source.  This
    identifier SHOULD be chosen randomly, with the intent that no two
    synchronization sources within the same RTP session will have the
    same SSRC identifier.  An example algorithm for generating a
    random identifier is presented in Appendix A.6.  Although the
    probability of multiple sources choosing the same identifier is
    low, all RTP implementations must be prepared to detect and
    resolve collisions.  Section 8 describes the probability of
    collision along with a mechanism for resolving collisions and
    detecting RTP-level forwarding loops based on the uniqueness of
    the SSRC identifier.  If a source changes its source transport
    address, it must also choose a new SSRC identifier to avoid being
    interpreted as a looped source (see Section 8.2).
 CSRC list: 0 to 15 items, 32 bits each
    The CSRC list identifies the contributing sources for the payload
    contained in this packet.  The number of identifiers is given by
    the CC field.  If there are more than 15 contributing sources,
    only 15 can be identified.  CSRC identifiers are inserted by
    mixers (see Section 7.1), using the SSRC identifiers of
    contributing sources.  For example, for audio packets the SSRC
    identifiers of all sources that were mixed together to create a
    packet are listed, allowing correct talker indication at the
    receiver.

5.2 Multiplexing RTP Sessions

 For efficient protocol processing, the number of multiplexing points
 should be minimized, as described in the integrated layer processing
 design principle [10].  In RTP, multiplexing is provided by the
 destination transport address (network address and port number) which
 is different for each RTP session.  For example, in a teleconference
 composed of audio and video media encoded separately, each medium
 SHOULD be carried in a separate RTP session with its own destination
 transport address.

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 16] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 Separate audio and video streams SHOULD NOT be carried in a single
 RTP session and demultiplexed based on the payload type or SSRC
 fields.  Interleaving packets with different RTP media types but
 using the same SSRC would introduce several problems:
 1. If, say, two audio streams shared the same RTP session and the
    same SSRC value, and one were to change encodings and thus acquire
    a different RTP payload type, there would be no general way of
    identifying which stream had changed encodings.
 2. An SSRC is defined to identify a single timing and sequence number
    space.  Interleaving multiple payload types would require
    different timing spaces if the media clock rates differ and would
    require different sequence number spaces to tell which payload
    type suffered packet loss.
 3. The RTCP sender and receiver reports (see Section 6.4) can only
    describe one timing and sequence number space per SSRC and do not
    carry a payload type field.
 4. An RTP mixer would not be able to combine interleaved streams of
    incompatible media into one stream.
 5. Carrying multiple media in one RTP session precludes: the use of
    different network paths or network resource allocations if
    appropriate; reception of a subset of the media if desired, for
    example just audio if video would exceed the available bandwidth;
    and receiver implementations that use separate processes for the
    different media, whereas using separate RTP sessions permits
    either single- or multiple-process implementations.
 Using a different SSRC for each medium but sending them in the same
 RTP session would avoid the first three problems but not the last
 two.
 On the other hand, multiplexing multiple related sources of the same
 medium in one RTP session using different SSRC values is the norm for
 multicast sessions.  The problems listed above don't apply: an RTP
 mixer can combine multiple audio sources, for example, and the same
 treatment is applicable for all of them.  It may also be appropriate
 to multiplex streams of the same medium using different SSRC values
 in other scenarios where the last two problems do not apply.

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 17] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

5.3 Profile-Specific Modifications to the RTP Header

 The existing RTP data packet header is believed to be complete for
 the set of functions required in common across all the application
 classes that RTP might support.  However, in keeping with the ALF
 design principle, the header MAY be tailored through modifications or
 additions defined in a profile specification while still allowing
 profile-independent monitoring and recording tools to function.
 o  The marker bit and payload type field carry profile-specific
    information, but they are allocated in the fixed header since many
    applications are expected to need them and might otherwise have to
    add another 32-bit word just to hold them.  The octet containing
    these fields MAY be redefined by a profile to suit different
    requirements, for example with more or fewer marker bits.  If
    there are any marker bits, one SHOULD be located in the most
    significant bit of the octet since profile-independent monitors
    may be able to observe a correlation between packet loss patterns
    and the marker bit.
 o  Additional information that is required for a particular payload
    format, such as a video encoding, SHOULD be carried in the payload
    section of the packet.  This might be in a header that is always
    present at the start of the payload section, or might be indicated
    by a reserved value in the data pattern.
 o  If a particular class of applications needs additional
    functionality independent of payload format, the profile under
    which those applications operate SHOULD define additional fixed
    fields to follow immediately after the SSRC field of the existing
    fixed header.  Those applications will be able to quickly and
    directly access the additional fields while profile-independent
    monitors or recorders can still process the RTP packets by
    interpreting only the first twelve octets.
 If it turns out that additional functionality is needed in common
 across all profiles, then a new version of RTP should be defined to
 make a permanent change to the fixed header.

5.3.1 RTP Header Extension

 An extension mechanism is provided to allow individual
 implementations to experiment with new payload-format-independent
 functions that require additional information to be carried in the
 RTP data packet header.  This mechanism is designed so that the
 header extension may be ignored by other interoperating
 implementations that have not been extended.

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 18] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 Note that this header extension is intended only for limited use.
 Most potential uses of this mechanism would be better done another
 way, using the methods described in the previous section.  For
 example, a profile-specific extension to the fixed header is less
 expensive to process because it is not conditional nor in a variable
 location.  Additional information required for a particular payload
 format SHOULD NOT use this header extension, but SHOULD be carried in
 the payload section of the packet.
  0                   1                   2                   3
  0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
 |      defined by profile       |           length              |
 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
 |                        header extension                       |
 |                             ....                              |
 If the X bit in the RTP header is one, a variable-length header
 extension MUST be appended to the RTP header, following the CSRC list
 if present.  The header extension contains a 16-bit length field that
 counts the number of 32-bit words in the extension, excluding the
 four-octet extension header (therefore zero is a valid length).  Only
 a single extension can be appended to the RTP data header.  To allow
 multiple interoperating implementations to each experiment
 independently with different header extensions, or to allow a
 particular implementation to experiment with more than one type of
 header extension, the first 16 bits of the header extension are left
 open for distinguishing identifiers or parameters.  The format of
 these 16 bits is to be defined by the profile specification under
 which the implementations are operating.  This RTP specification does
 not define any header extensions itself.

6. RTP Control Protocol – RTCP

 The RTP control protocol (RTCP) is based on the periodic transmission
 of control packets to all participants in the session, using the same
 distribution mechanism as the data packets.  The underlying protocol
 MUST provide multiplexing of the data and control packets, for
 example using separate port numbers with UDP.  RTCP performs four
 functions:
 1. The primary function is to provide feedback on the quality of the
    data distribution.  This is an integral part of the RTP's role as
    a transport protocol and is related to the flow and congestion
    control functions of other transport protocols (see Section 10 on
    the requirement for congestion control).  The feedback may be
    directly useful for control of adaptive encodings [18,19], but
    experiments with IP multicasting have shown that it is also

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 19] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

    critical to get feedback from the receivers to diagnose faults in
    the distribution.  Sending reception feedback reports to all
    participants allows one who is observing problems to evaluate
    whether those problems are local or global.  With a distribution
    mechanism like IP multicast, it is also possible for an entity
    such as a network service provider who is not otherwise involved
    in the session to receive the feedback information and act as a
    third-party monitor to diagnose network problems.  This feedback
    function is performed by the RTCP sender and receiver reports,
    described below in Section 6.4.
 2. RTCP carries a persistent transport-level identifier for an RTP
    source called the canonical name or CNAME, Section 6.5.1.  Since
    the SSRC identifier may change if a conflict is discovered or a
    program is restarted, receivers require the CNAME to keep track of
    each participant.  Receivers may also require the CNAME to
    associate multiple data streams from a given participant in a set
    of related RTP sessions, for example to synchronize audio and
    video.  Inter-media synchronization also requires the NTP and RTP
    timestamps included in RTCP packets by data senders.
 3. The first two functions require that all participants send RTCP
    packets, therefore the rate must be controlled in order for RTP to
    scale up to a large number of participants.  By having each
    participant send its control packets to all the others, each can
    independently observe the number of participants.  This number is
    used to calculate the rate at which the packets are sent, as
    explained in Section 6.2.
 4. A fourth, OPTIONAL function is to convey minimal session control
    information, for example participant identification to be
    displayed in the user interface.  This is most likely to be useful
    in "loosely controlled" sessions where participants enter and
    leave without membership control or parameter negotiation.  RTCP
    serves as a convenient channel to reach all the participants, but
    it is not necessarily expected to support all the control
    communication requirements of an application.  A higher-level
    session control protocol, which is beyond the scope of this
    document, may be needed.
 Functions 1-3 SHOULD be used in all environments, but particularly in
 the IP multicast environment.  RTP application designers SHOULD avoid
 mechanisms that can only work in unicast mode and will not scale to
 larger numbers.  Transmission of RTCP MAY be controlled separately
 for senders and receivers, as described in Section 6.2, for cases
 such as unidirectional links where feedback from receivers is not
 possible.

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 20] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 Non-normative note:  In the multicast routing approach
    called Source-Specific Multicast (SSM), there is only one sender
    per "channel" (a source address, group address pair), and
    receivers (except for the channel source) cannot use multicast to
    communicate directly with other channel members.  The
    recommendations here accommodate SSM only through Section 6.2's
    option of turning off receivers' RTCP entirely.  Future work will
    specify adaptation of RTCP for SSM so that feedback from receivers
    can be maintained.

6.1 RTCP Packet Format

 This specification defines several RTCP packet types to carry a
 variety of control information:
 SR:   Sender report, for transmission and reception statistics from
       participants that are active senders
 RR:   Receiver report, for reception statistics from participants
       that are not active senders and in combination with SR for
       active senders reporting on more than 31 sources
 SDES: Source description items, including CNAME
 BYE:  Indicates end of participation
 APP:  Application-specific functions
 Each RTCP packet begins with a fixed part similar to that of RTP data
 packets, followed by structured elements that MAY be of variable
 length according to the packet type but MUST end on a 32-bit
 boundary.  The alignment requirement and a length field in the fixed
 part of each packet are included to make RTCP packets "stackable".
 Multiple RTCP packets can be concatenated without any intervening
 separators to form a compound RTCP packet that is sent in a single
 packet of the lower layer protocol, for example UDP.  There is no
 explicit count of individual RTCP packets in the compound packet
 since the lower layer protocols are expected to provide an overall
 length to determine the end of the compound packet.
 Each individual RTCP packet in the compound packet may be processed
 independently with no requirements upon the order or combination of
 packets.  However, in order to perform the functions of the protocol,
 the following constraints are imposed:

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 21] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 o  Reception statistics (in SR or RR) should be sent as often as
    bandwidth constraints will allow to maximize the resolution of the
    statistics, therefore each periodically transmitted compound RTCP
    packet MUST include a report packet.
 o  New receivers need to receive the CNAME for a source as soon as
    possible to identify the source and to begin associating media for
    purposes such as lip-sync, so each compound RTCP packet MUST also
    include the SDES CNAME except when the compound RTCP packet is
    split for partial encryption as described in Section 9.1.
 o  The number of packet types that may appear first in the compound
    packet needs to be limited to increase the number of constant bits
    in the first word and the probability of successfully validating
    RTCP packets against misaddressed RTP data packets or other
    unrelated packets.
 Thus, all RTCP packets MUST be sent in a compound packet of at least
 two individual packets, with the following format:
 Encryption prefix:  If and only if the compound packet is to be
    encrypted according to the method in Section 9.1, it MUST be
    prefixed by a random 32-bit quantity redrawn for every compound
    packet transmitted.  If padding is required for the encryption, it
    MUST be added to the last packet of the compound packet.
 SR or RR:  The first RTCP packet in the compound packet MUST
    always be a report packet to facilitate header validation as
    described in Appendix A.2.  This is true even if no data has been
    sent or received, in which case an empty RR MUST be sent, and even
    if the only other RTCP packet in the compound packet is a BYE.
 Additional RRs:  If the number of sources for which reception
    statistics are being reported exceeds 31, the number that will fit
    into one SR or RR packet, then additional RR packets SHOULD follow
    the initial report packet.
 SDES:  An SDES packet containing a CNAME item MUST be included
    in each compound RTCP packet, except as noted in Section 9.1.
    Other source description items MAY optionally be included if
    required by a particular application, subject to bandwidth
    constraints (see Section 6.3.9).
 BYE or APP:  Other RTCP packet types, including those yet to be
    defined, MAY follow in any order, except that BYE SHOULD be the
    last packet sent with a given SSRC/CSRC.  Packet types MAY appear
    more than once.

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 22] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 An individual RTP participant SHOULD send only one compound RTCP
 packet per report interval in order for the RTCP bandwidth per
 participant to be estimated correctly (see Section 6.2), except when
 the compound RTCP packet is split for partial encryption as described
 in Section 9.1.  If there are too many sources to fit all the
 necessary RR packets into one compound RTCP packet without exceeding
 the maximum transmission unit (MTU) of the network path, then only
 the subset that will fit into one MTU SHOULD be included in each
 interval.  The subsets SHOULD be selected round-robin across multiple
 intervals so that all sources are reported.
 It is RECOMMENDED that translators and mixers combine individual RTCP
 packets from the multiple sources they are forwarding into one
 compound packet whenever feasible in order to amortize the packet
 overhead (see Section 7).  An example RTCP compound packet as might
 be produced by a mixer is shown in Fig. 1.  If the overall length of
 a compound packet would exceed the MTU of the network path, it SHOULD
 be segmented into multiple shorter compound packets to be transmitted
 in separate packets of the underlying protocol.  This does not impair
 the RTCP bandwidth estimation because each compound packet represents
 at least one distinct participant.  Note that each of the compound
 packets MUST begin with an SR or RR packet.
 An implementation SHOULD ignore incoming RTCP packets with types
 unknown to it.  Additional RTCP packet types may be registered with
 the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) as described in
 Section 15.
 if encrypted: random 32-bit integer
 |
 |[--------- packet --------][---------- packet ----------][-packet-]
 |
 |                receiver            chunk        chunk
 V                reports           item  item   item  item
 --------------------------------------------------------------------
 R[SR #sendinfo #site1#site2][SDES #CNAME PHONE #CNAME LOC][BYE##why]
 --------------------------------------------------------------------
 |                                                                  |
 |<-----------------------  compound packet ----------------------->|
 |<--------------------------  UDP packet ------------------------->|
 #: SSRC/CSRC identifier
            Figure 1: Example of an RTCP compound packet

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 23] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

6.2 RTCP Transmission Interval

 RTP is designed to allow an application to scale automatically over
 session sizes ranging from a few participants to thousands.  For
 example, in an audio conference the data traffic is inherently self-
 limiting because only one or two people will speak at a time, so with
 multicast distribution the data rate on any given link remains
 relatively constant independent of the number of participants.
 However, the control traffic is not self-limiting.  If the reception
 reports from each participant were sent at a constant rate, the
 control traffic would grow linearly with the number of participants.
 Therefore, the rate must be scaled down by dynamically calculating
 the interval between RTCP packet transmissions.
 For each session, it is assumed that the data traffic is subject to
 an aggregate limit called the "session bandwidth" to be divided among
 the participants.  This bandwidth might be reserved and the limit
 enforced by the network.  If there is no reservation, there may be
 other constraints, depending on the environment, that establish the
 "reasonable" maximum for the session to use, and that would be the
 session bandwidth.  The session bandwidth may be chosen based on some
 cost or a priori knowledge of the available network bandwidth for the
 session.  It is somewhat independent of the media encoding, but the
 encoding choice may be limited by the session bandwidth.  Often, the
 session bandwidth is the sum of the nominal bandwidths of the senders
 expected to be concurrently active.  For teleconference audio, this
 number would typically be one sender's bandwidth.  For layered
 encodings, each layer is a separate RTP session with its own session
 bandwidth parameter.
 The session bandwidth parameter is expected to be supplied by a
 session management application when it invokes a media application,
 but media applications MAY set a default based on the single-sender
 data bandwidth for the encoding selected for the session.  The
 application MAY also enforce bandwidth limits based on multicast
 scope rules or other criteria.  All participants MUST use the same
 value for the session bandwidth so that the same RTCP interval will
 be calculated.
 Bandwidth calculations for control and data traffic include lower-
 layer transport and network protocols (e.g., UDP and IP) since that
 is what the resource reservation system would need to know.  The
 application can also be expected to know which of these protocols are
 in use.  Link level headers are not included in the calculation since
 the packet will be encapsulated with different link level headers as
 it travels.

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 24] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 The control traffic should be limited to a small and known fraction
 of the session bandwidth: small so that the primary function of the
 transport protocol to carry data is not impaired; known so that the
 control traffic can be included in the bandwidth specification given
 to a resource reservation protocol, and so that each participant can
 independently calculate its share.  The control traffic bandwidth is
 in addition to the session bandwidth for the data traffic.  It is
 RECOMMENDED that the fraction of the session bandwidth added for RTCP
 be fixed at 5%.  It is also RECOMMENDED that 1/4 of the RTCP
 bandwidth be dedicated to participants that are sending data so that
 in sessions with a large number of receivers but a small number of
 senders, newly joining participants will more quickly receive the
 CNAME for the sending sites.  When the proportion of senders is
 greater than 1/4 of the participants, the senders get their
 proportion of the full RTCP bandwidth.  While the values of these and
 other constants in the interval calculation are not critical, all
 participants in the session MUST use the same values so the same
 interval will be calculated.  Therefore, these constants SHOULD be
 fixed for a particular profile.
 A profile MAY specify that the control traffic bandwidth may be a
 separate parameter of the session rather than a strict percentage of
 the session bandwidth.  Using a separate parameter allows rate-
 adaptive applications to set an RTCP bandwidth consistent with a
 "typical" data bandwidth that is lower than the maximum bandwidth
 specified by the session bandwidth parameter.
 The profile MAY further specify that the control traffic bandwidth
 may be divided into two separate session parameters for those
 participants which are active data senders and those which are not;
 let us call the parameters S and R.  Following the recommendation
 that 1/4 of the RTCP bandwidth be dedicated to data senders, the
 RECOMMENDED default values for these two parameters would be 1.25%
 and 3.75%, respectively.  When the proportion of senders is greater
 than S/(S+R) of the participants, the senders get their proportion of
 the sum of these parameters.  Using two parameters allows RTCP
 reception reports to be turned off entirely for a particular session
 by setting the RTCP bandwidth for non-data-senders to zero while
 keeping the RTCP bandwidth for data senders non-zero so that sender
 reports can still be sent for inter-media synchronization.  Turning
 off RTCP reception reports is NOT RECOMMENDED because they are needed
 for the functions listed at the beginning of Section 6, particularly
 reception quality feedback and congestion control.  However, doing so
 may be appropriate for systems operating on unidirectional links or
 for sessions that don't require feedback on the quality of reception
 or liveness of receivers and that have other means to avoid
 congestion.

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 25] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 The calculated interval between transmissions of compound RTCP
 packets SHOULD also have a lower bound to avoid having bursts of
 packets exceed the allowed bandwidth when the number of participants
 is small and the traffic isn't smoothed according to the law of large
 numbers.  It also keeps the report interval from becoming too small
 during transient outages like a network partition such that
 adaptation is delayed when the partition heals.  At application
 startup, a delay SHOULD be imposed before the first compound RTCP
 packet is sent to allow time for RTCP packets to be received from
 other participants so the report interval will converge to the
 correct value more quickly.  This delay MAY be set to half the
 minimum interval to allow quicker notification that the new
 participant is present.  The RECOMMENDED value for a fixed minimum
 interval is 5 seconds.
 An implementation MAY scale the minimum RTCP interval to a smaller
 value inversely proportional to the session bandwidth parameter with
 the following limitations:
 o  For multicast sessions, only active data senders MAY use the
    reduced minimum value to calculate the interval for transmission
    of compound RTCP packets.
 o  For unicast sessions, the reduced value MAY be used by
    participants that are not active data senders as well, and the
    delay before sending the initial compound RTCP packet MAY be zero.
 o  For all sessions, the fixed minimum SHOULD be used when
    calculating the participant timeout interval (see Section 6.3.5)
    so that implementations which do not use the reduced value for
    transmitting RTCP packets are not timed out by other participants
    prematurely.
 o  The RECOMMENDED value for the reduced minimum in seconds is 360
    divided by the session bandwidth in kilobits/second.  This minimum
    is smaller than 5 seconds for bandwidths greater than 72 kb/s.
 The algorithm described in Section 6.3 and Appendix A.7 was designed
 to meet the goals outlined in this section.  It calculates the
 interval between sending compound RTCP packets to divide the allowed
 control traffic bandwidth among the participants.  This allows an
 application to provide fast response for small sessions where, for
 example, identification of all participants is important, yet
 automatically adapt to large sessions.  The algorithm incorporates
 the following characteristics:

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 26] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 o  The calculated interval between RTCP packets scales linearly with
    the number of members in the group.  It is this linear factor
    which allows for a constant amount of control traffic when summed
    across all members.
 o  The interval between RTCP packets is varied randomly over the
    range [0.5,1.5] times the calculated interval to avoid unintended
    synchronization of all participants [20].  The first RTCP packet
    sent after joining a session is also delayed by a random variation
    of half the minimum RTCP interval.
 o  A dynamic estimate of the average compound RTCP packet size is
    calculated, including all those packets received and sent, to
    automatically adapt to changes in the amount of control
    information carried.
 o  Since the calculated interval is dependent on the number of
    observed group members, there may be undesirable startup effects
    when a new user joins an existing session, or many users
    simultaneously join a new session.  These new users will initially
    have incorrect estimates of the group membership, and thus their
    RTCP transmission interval will be too short.  This problem can be
    significant if many users join the session simultaneously.  To
    deal with this, an algorithm called "timer reconsideration" is
    employed.  This algorithm implements a simple back-off mechanism
    which causes users to hold back RTCP packet transmission if the
    group sizes are increasing.
 o  When users leave a session, either with a BYE or by timeout, the
    group membership decreases, and thus the calculated interval
    should decrease.  A "reverse reconsideration" algorithm is used to
    allow members to more quickly reduce their intervals in response
    to group membership decreases.
 o  BYE packets are given different treatment than other RTCP packets.
    When a user leaves a group, and wishes to send a BYE packet, it
    may do so before its next scheduled RTCP packet.  However,
    transmission of BYEs follows a back-off algorithm which avoids
    floods of BYE packets should a large number of members
    simultaneously leave the session.
 This algorithm may be used for sessions in which all participants are
 allowed to send.  In that case, the session bandwidth parameter is
 the product of the individual sender's bandwidth times the number of
 participants, and the RTCP bandwidth is 5% of that.
 Details of the algorithm's operation are given in the sections that
 follow.  Appendix A.7 gives an example implementation.

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 27] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

6.2.1 Maintaining the Number of Session Members

 Calculation of the RTCP packet interval depends upon an estimate of
 the number of sites participating in the session.  New sites are
 added to the count when they are heard, and an entry for each SHOULD
 be created in a table indexed by the SSRC or CSRC identifier (see
 Section 8.2) to keep track of them.  New entries MAY be considered
 not valid until multiple packets carrying the new SSRC have been
 received (see Appendix A.1), or until an SDES RTCP packet containing
 a CNAME for that SSRC has been received.  Entries MAY be deleted from
 the table when an RTCP BYE packet with the corresponding SSRC
 identifier is received, except that some straggler data packets might
 arrive after the BYE and cause the entry to be recreated.  Instead,
 the entry SHOULD be marked as having received a BYE and then deleted
 after an appropriate delay.
 A participant MAY mark another site inactive, or delete it if not yet
 valid, if no RTP or RTCP packet has been received for a small number
 of RTCP report intervals (5 is RECOMMENDED).  This provides some
 robustness against packet loss.  All sites must have the same value
 for this multiplier and must calculate roughly the same value for the
 RTCP report interval in order for this timeout to work properly.
 Therefore, this multiplier SHOULD be fixed for a particular profile.
 For sessions with a very large number of participants, it may be
 impractical to maintain a table to store the SSRC identifier and
 state information for all of them.  An implementation MAY use SSRC
 sampling, as described in [21], to reduce the storage requirements.
 An implementation MAY use any other algorithm with similar
 performance.  A key requirement is that any algorithm considered
 SHOULD NOT substantially underestimate the group size, although it
 MAY overestimate.

6.3 RTCP Packet Send and Receive Rules

 The rules for how to send, and what to do when receiving an RTCP
 packet are outlined here.  An implementation that allows operation in
 a multicast environment or a multipoint unicast environment MUST meet
 the requirements in Section 6.2.  Such an implementation MAY use the
 algorithm defined in this section to meet those requirements, or MAY
 use some other algorithm so long as it provides equivalent or better
 performance.  An implementation which is constrained to two-party
 unicast operation SHOULD still use randomization of the RTCP
 transmission interval to avoid unintended synchronization of multiple
 instances operating in the same environment, but MAY omit the "timer
 reconsideration" and "reverse reconsideration" algorithms in Sections
 6.3.3, 6.3.6 and 6.3.7.

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 28] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 To execute these rules, a session participant must maintain several
 pieces of state:
 tp: the last time an RTCP packet was transmitted;
 tc: the current time;
 tn: the next scheduled transmission time of an RTCP packet;
 pmembers: the estimated number of session members at the time tn
    was last recomputed;
 members: the most current estimate for the number of session
    members;
 senders: the most current estimate for the number of senders in
    the session;
 rtcp_bw: The target RTCP bandwidth, i.e., the total bandwidth
    that will be used for RTCP packets by all members of this session,
    in octets per second.  This will be a specified fraction of the
    "session bandwidth" parameter supplied to the application at
    startup.
 we_sent: Flag that is true if the application has sent data
    since the 2nd previous RTCP report was transmitted.
 avg_rtcp_size: The average compound RTCP packet size, in octets,
    over all RTCP packets sent and received by this participant.  The
    size includes lower-layer transport and network protocol headers
    (e.g., UDP and IP) as explained in Section 6.2.
 initial: Flag that is true if the application has not yet sent
    an RTCP packet.
 Many of these rules make use of the "calculated interval" between
 packet transmissions.  This interval is described in the following
 section.

6.3.1 Computing the RTCP Transmission Interval

 To maintain scalability, the average interval between packets from a
 session participant should scale with the group size.  This interval
 is called the calculated interval.  It is obtained by combining a
 number of the pieces of state described above.  The calculated
 interval T is then determined as follows:

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 29] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 1. If the number of senders is less than or equal to 25% of the
    membership (members), the interval depends on whether the
    participant is a sender or not (based on the value of we_sent).
    If the participant is a sender (we_sent true), the constant C is
    set to the average RTCP packet size (avg_rtcp_size) divided by 25%
    of the RTCP bandwidth (rtcp_bw), and the constant n is set to the
    number of senders.  If we_sent is not true, the constant C is set
    to the average RTCP packet size divided by 75% of the RTCP
    bandwidth.  The constant n is set to the number of receivers
    (members - senders).  If the number of senders is greater than
    25%, senders and receivers are treated together.  The constant C
    is set to the average RTCP packet size divided by the total RTCP
    bandwidth and n is set to the total number of members.  As stated
    in Section 6.2, an RTP profile MAY specify that the RTCP bandwidth
    may be explicitly defined by two separate parameters (call them S
    and R) for those participants which are senders and those which
    are not.  In that case, the 25% fraction becomes S/(S+R) and the
    75% fraction becomes R/(S+R).  Note that if R is zero, the
    percentage of senders is never greater than S/(S+R), and the
    implementation must avoid division by zero.
 2. If the participant has not yet sent an RTCP packet (the variable
    initial is true), the constant Tmin is set to 2.5 seconds, else it
    is set to 5 seconds.
 3. The deterministic calculated interval Td is set to max(Tmin, n*C).
 4. The calculated interval T is set to a number uniformly distributed
    between 0.5 and 1.5 times the deterministic calculated interval.
 5. The resulting value of T is divided by e-3/2=1.21828 to compensate
    for the fact that the timer reconsideration algorithm converges to
    a value of the RTCP bandwidth below the intended average.
 This procedure results in an interval which is random, but which, on
 average, gives at least 25% of the RTCP bandwidth to senders and the
 rest to receivers.  If the senders constitute more than one quarter
 of the membership, this procedure splits the bandwidth equally among
 all participants, on average.

6.3.2 Initialization

 Upon joining the session, the participant initializes tp to 0, tc to
 0, senders to 0, pmembers to 1, members to 1, we_sent to false,
 rtcp_bw to the specified fraction of the session bandwidth, initial
 to true, and avg_rtcp_size to the probable size of the first RTCP
 packet that the application will later construct.  The calculated
 interval T is then computed, and the first packet is scheduled for

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 30] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 time tn = T.  This means that a transmission timer is set which
 expires at time T.  Note that an application MAY use any desired
 approach for implementing this timer.
 The participant adds its own SSRC to the member table.

6.3.3 Receiving an RTP or Non-BYE RTCP Packet

 When an RTP or RTCP packet is received from a participant whose SSRC
 is not in the member table, the SSRC is added to the table, and the
 value for members is updated once the participant has been validated
 as described in Section 6.2.1.  The same processing occurs for each
 CSRC in a validated RTP packet.
 When an RTP packet is received from a participant whose SSRC is not
 in the sender table, the SSRC is added to the table, and the value
 for senders is updated.
 For each compound RTCP packet received, the value of avg_rtcp_size is
 updated:
    avg_rtcp_size = (1/16) * packet_size + (15/16) * avg_rtcp_size
 where packet_size is the size of the RTCP packet just received.

6.3.4 Receiving an RTCP BYE Packet

 Except as described in Section 6.3.7 for the case when an RTCP BYE is
 to be transmitted, if the received packet is an RTCP BYE packet, the
 SSRC is checked against the member table.  If present, the entry is
 removed from the table, and the value for members is updated.  The
 SSRC is then checked against the sender table.  If present, the entry
 is removed from the table, and the value for senders is updated.
 Furthermore, to make the transmission rate of RTCP packets more
 adaptive to changes in group membership, the following "reverse
 reconsideration" algorithm SHOULD be executed when a BYE packet is
 received that reduces members to a value less than pmembers:
 o  The value for tn is updated according to the following formula:
       tn = tc + (members/pmembers) * (tn - tc)
 o  The value for tp is updated according the following formula:
       tp = tc - (members/pmembers) * (tc - tp).

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 31] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 o  The next RTCP packet is rescheduled for transmission at time tn,
    which is now earlier.
 o  The value of pmembers is set equal to members.
 This algorithm does not prevent the group size estimate from
 incorrectly dropping to zero for a short time due to premature
 timeouts when most participants of a large session leave at once but
 some remain.  The algorithm does make the estimate return to the
 correct value more rapidly.  This situation is unusual enough and the
 consequences are sufficiently harmless that this problem is deemed
 only a secondary concern.

6.3.5 Timing Out an SSRC

 At occasional intervals, the participant MUST check to see if any of
 the other participants time out.  To do this, the participant
 computes the deterministic (without the randomization factor)
 calculated interval Td for a receiver, that is, with we_sent false.
 Any other session member who has not sent an RTP or RTCP packet since
 time tc - MTd (M is the timeout multiplier, and defaults to 5) is
 timed out.  This means that its SSRC is removed from the member list,
 and members is updated.  A similar check is performed on the sender
 list.  Any member on the sender list who has not sent an RTP packet
 since time tc - 2T (within the last two RTCP report intervals) is
 removed from the sender list, and senders is updated.
 If any members time out, the reverse reconsideration algorithm
 described in Section 6.3.4 SHOULD be performed.
 The participant MUST perform this check at least once per RTCP
 transmission interval.

6.3.6 Expiration of Transmission Timer

 When the packet transmission timer expires, the participant performs
 the following operations:
 o  The transmission interval T is computed as described in Section
    6.3.1, including the randomization factor.
 o  If tp + T is less than or equal to tc, an RTCP packet is
    transmitted.  tp is set to tc, then another value for T is
    calculated as in the previous step and tn is set to tc + T.  The
    transmission timer is set to expire again at time tn.  If tp + T
    is greater than tc, tn is set to tp + T.  No RTCP packet is
    transmitted.  The transmission timer is set to expire at time tn.

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 32] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 o  pmembers is set to members.
 If an RTCP packet is transmitted, the value of initial is set to
 FALSE.  Furthermore, the value of avg_rtcp_size is updated:
    avg_rtcp_size = (1/16) * packet_size + (15/16) * avg_rtcp_size
 where packet_size is the size of the RTCP packet just transmitted.

6.3.7 Transmitting a BYE Packet

 When a participant wishes to leave a session, a BYE packet is
 transmitted to inform the other participants of the event.  In order
 to avoid a flood of BYE packets when many participants leave the
 system, a participant MUST execute the following algorithm if the
 number of members is more than 50 when the participant chooses to
 leave.  This algorithm usurps the normal role of the members variable
 to count BYE packets instead:
 o  When the participant decides to leave the system, tp is reset to
    tc, the current time, members and pmembers are initialized to 1,
    initial is set to 1, we_sent is set to false, senders is set to 0,
    and avg_rtcp_size is set to the size of the compound BYE packet.
    The calculated interval T is computed.  The BYE packet is then
    scheduled for time tn = tc + T.
 o  Every time a BYE packet from another participant is received,
    members is incremented by 1 regardless of whether that participant
    exists in the member table or not, and when SSRC sampling is in
    use, regardless of whether or not the BYE SSRC would be included
    in the sample.  members is NOT incremented when other RTCP packets
    or RTP packets are received, but only for BYE packets.  Similarly,
    avg_rtcp_size is updated only for received BYE packets.  senders
    is NOT updated when RTP packets arrive; it remains 0.
 o  Transmission of the BYE packet then follows the rules for
    transmitting a regular RTCP packet, as above.
 This allows BYE packets to be sent right away, yet controls their
 total bandwidth usage.  In the worst case, this could cause RTCP
 control packets to use twice the bandwidth as normal (10%) -- 5% for
 non-BYE RTCP packets and 5% for BYE.
 A participant that does not want to wait for the above mechanism to
 allow transmission of a BYE packet MAY leave the group without
 sending a BYE at all.  That participant will eventually be timed out
 by the other group members.

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 33] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 If the group size estimate members is less than 50 when the
 participant decides to leave, the participant MAY send a BYE packet
 immediately.  Alternatively, the participant MAY choose to execute
 the above BYE backoff algorithm.
 In either case, a participant which never sent an RTP or RTCP packet
 MUST NOT send a BYE packet when they leave the group.

6.3.8 Updating we_sent

 The variable we_sent contains true if the participant has sent an RTP
 packet recently, false otherwise.  This determination is made by
 using the same mechanisms as for managing the set of other
 participants listed in the senders table.  If the participant sends
 an RTP packet when we_sent is false, it adds itself to the sender
 table and sets we_sent to true.  The reverse reconsideration
 algorithm described in Section 6.3.4 SHOULD be performed to possibly
 reduce the delay before sending an SR packet.  Every time another RTP
 packet is sent, the time of transmission of that packet is maintained
 in the table.  The normal sender timeout algorithm is then applied to
 the participant -- if an RTP packet has not been transmitted since
 time tc - 2T, the participant removes itself from the sender table,
 decrements the sender count, and sets we_sent to false.

6.3.9 Allocation of Source Description Bandwidth

 This specification defines several source description (SDES) items in
 addition to the mandatory CNAME item, such as NAME (personal name)
 and EMAIL (email address).  It also provides a means to define new
 application-specific RTCP packet types.  Applications should exercise
 caution in allocating control bandwidth to this additional
 information because it will slow down the rate at which reception
 reports and CNAME are sent, thus impairing the performance of the
 protocol.  It is RECOMMENDED that no more than 20% of the RTCP
 bandwidth allocated to a single participant be used to carry the
 additional information.  Furthermore, it is not intended that all
 SDES items will be included in every application.  Those that are
 included SHOULD be assigned a fraction of the bandwidth according to
 their utility.  Rather than estimate these fractions dynamically, it
 is recommended that the percentages be translated statically into
 report interval counts based on the typical length of an item.
 For example, an application may be designed to send only CNAME, NAME
 and EMAIL and not any others.  NAME might be given much higher
 priority than EMAIL because the NAME would be displayed continuously
 in the application's user interface, whereas EMAIL would be displayed
 only when requested.  At every RTCP interval, an RR packet and an
 SDES packet with the CNAME item would be sent.  For a small session

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 34] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 operating at the minimum interval, that would be every 5 seconds on
 the average.  Every third interval (15 seconds), one extra item would
 be included in the SDES packet.  Seven out of eight times this would
 be the NAME item, and every eighth time (2 minutes) it would be the
 EMAIL item.
 When multiple applications operate in concert using cross-application
 binding through a common CNAME for each participant, for example in a
 multimedia conference composed of an RTP session for each medium, the
 additional SDES information MAY be sent in only one RTP session.  The
 other sessions would carry only the CNAME item.  In particular, this
 approach should be applied to the multiple sessions of a layered
 encoding scheme (see Section 2.4).

6.4 Sender and Receiver Reports

 RTP receivers provide reception quality feedback using RTCP report
 packets which may take one of two forms depending upon whether or not
 the receiver is also a sender.  The only difference between the
 sender report (SR) and receiver report (RR) forms, besides the packet
 type code, is that the sender report includes a 20-byte sender
 information section for use by active senders.  The SR is issued if a
 site has sent any data packets during the interval since issuing the
 last report or the previous one, otherwise the RR is issued.
 Both the SR and RR forms include zero or more reception report
 blocks, one for each of the synchronization sources from which this
 receiver has received RTP data packets since the last report.
 Reports are not issued for contributing sources listed in the CSRC
 list.  Each reception report block provides statistics about the data
 received from the particular source indicated in that block.  Since a
 maximum of 31 reception report blocks will fit in an SR or RR packet,
 additional RR packets SHOULD be stacked after the initial SR or RR
 packet as needed to contain the reception reports for all sources
 heard during the interval since the last report.  If there are too
 many sources to fit all the necessary RR packets into one compound
 RTCP packet without exceeding the MTU of the network path, then only
 the subset that will fit into one MTU SHOULD be included in each
 interval.  The subsets SHOULD be selected round-robin across multiple
 intervals so that all sources are reported.
 The next sections define the formats of the two reports, how they may
 be extended in a profile-specific manner if an application requires
 additional feedback information, and how the reports may be used.
 Details of reception reporting by translators and mixers is given in
 Section 7.

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 35] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

6.4.1 SR: Sender Report RTCP Packet

      0                   1                   2                   3
      0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
     +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

header |V=2|P| RC | PT=SR=200 | length |

     +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
     |                         SSRC of sender                        |
     +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+

sender | NTP timestamp, most significant word | info +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

     |             NTP timestamp, least significant word             |
     +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
     |                         RTP timestamp                         |
     +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
     |                     sender's packet count                     |
     +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
     |                      sender's octet count                     |
     +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+

report | SSRC_1 (SSRC of first source) | block +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

1    | fraction lost |       cumulative number of packets lost       |
     +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
     |           extended highest sequence number received           |
     +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
     |                      interarrival jitter                      |
     +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
     |                         last SR (LSR)                         |
     +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
     |                   delay since last SR (DLSR)                  |
     +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+

report | SSRC_2 (SSRC of second source) | block +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

2    :                               ...                             :
     +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
     |                  profile-specific extensions                  |
     +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
 The sender report packet consists of three sections, possibly
 followed by a fourth profile-specific extension section if defined.
 The first section, the header, is 8 octets long.  The fields have the
 following meaning:
 version (V): 2 bits
    Identifies the version of RTP, which is the same in RTCP packets
    as in RTP data packets.  The version defined by this specification
    is two (2).

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 36] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 padding (P): 1 bit
    If the padding bit is set, this individual RTCP packet contains
    some additional padding octets at the end which are not part of
    the control information but are included in the length field.  The
    last octet of the padding is a count of how many padding octets
    should be ignored, including itself (it will be a multiple of
    four).  Padding may be needed by some encryption algorithms with
    fixed block sizes.  In a compound RTCP packet, padding is only
    required on one individual packet because the compound packet is
    encrypted as a whole for the method in Section 9.1.  Thus, padding
    MUST only be added to the last individual packet, and if padding
    is added to that packet, the padding bit MUST be set only on that
    packet.  This convention aids the header validity checks described
    in Appendix A.2 and allows detection of packets from some early
    implementations that incorrectly set the padding bit on the first
    individual packet and add padding to the last individual packet.
 reception report count (RC): 5 bits
    The number of reception report blocks contained in this packet.  A
    value of zero is valid.
 packet type (PT): 8 bits
    Contains the constant 200 to identify this as an RTCP SR packet.
 length: 16 bits
    The length of this RTCP packet in 32-bit words minus one,
    including the header and any padding.  (The offset of one makes
    zero a valid length and avoids a possible infinite loop in
    scanning a compound RTCP packet, while counting 32-bit words
    avoids a validity check for a multiple of 4.)
 SSRC: 32 bits
    The synchronization source identifier for the originator of this
    SR packet.
 The second section, the sender information, is 20 octets long and is
 present in every sender report packet.  It summarizes the data
 transmissions from this sender.  The fields have the following
 meaning:
 NTP timestamp: 64 bits
    Indicates the wallclock time (see Section 4) when this report was
    sent so that it may be used in combination with timestamps
    returned in reception reports from other receivers to measure
    round-trip propagation to those receivers.  Receivers should
    expect that the measurement accuracy of the timestamp may be
    limited to far less than the resolution of the NTP timestamp.  The
    measurement uncertainty of the timestamp is not indicated as it

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 37] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

    may not be known.  On a system that has no notion of wallclock
    time but does have some system-specific clock such as "system
    uptime", a sender MAY use that clock as a reference to calculate
    relative NTP timestamps.  It is important to choose a commonly
    used clock so that if separate implementations are used to produce
    the individual streams of a multimedia session, all
    implementations will use the same clock.  Until the year 2036,
    relative and absolute timestamps will differ in the high bit so
    (invalid) comparisons will show a large difference; by then one
    hopes relative timestamps will no longer be needed.  A sender that
    has no notion of wallclock or elapsed time MAY set the NTP
    timestamp to zero.
 RTP timestamp: 32 bits
    Corresponds to the same time as the NTP timestamp (above), but in
    the same units and with the same random offset as the RTP
    timestamps in data packets.  This correspondence may be used for
    intra- and inter-media synchronization for sources whose NTP
    timestamps are synchronized, and may be used by media-independent
    receivers to estimate the nominal RTP clock frequency.  Note that
    in most cases this timestamp will not be equal to the RTP
    timestamp in any adjacent data packet.  Rather, it MUST be
    calculated from the corresponding NTP timestamp using the
    relationship between the RTP timestamp counter and real time as
    maintained by periodically checking the wallclock time at a
    sampling instant.
 sender's packet count: 32 bits
    The total number of RTP data packets transmitted by the sender
    since starting transmission up until the time this SR packet was
    generated.  The count SHOULD be reset if the sender changes its
    SSRC identifier.
 sender's octet count: 32 bits
    The total number of payload octets (i.e., not including header or
    padding) transmitted in RTP data packets by the sender since
    starting transmission up until the time this SR packet was
    generated.  The count SHOULD be reset if the sender changes its
    SSRC identifier.  This field can be used to estimate the average
    payload data rate.
 The third section contains zero or more reception report blocks
 depending on the number of other sources heard by this sender since
 the last report.  Each reception report block conveys statistics on
 the reception of RTP packets from a single synchronization source.
 Receivers SHOULD NOT carry over statistics when a source changes its
 SSRC identifier due to a collision.  These statistics are:

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 38] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 SSRC_n (source identifier): 32 bits
    The SSRC identifier of the source to which the information in this
    reception report block pertains.
 fraction lost: 8 bits
    The fraction of RTP data packets from source SSRC_n lost since the
    previous SR or RR packet was sent, expressed as a fixed point
    number with the binary point at the left edge of the field.  (That
    is equivalent to taking the integer part after multiplying the
    loss fraction by 256.)  This fraction is defined to be the number
    of packets lost divided by the number of packets expected, as
    defined in the next paragraph.  An implementation is shown in
    Appendix A.3.  If the loss is negative due to duplicates, the
    fraction lost is set to zero.  Note that a receiver cannot tell
    whether any packets were lost after the last one received, and
    that there will be no reception report block issued for a source
    if all packets from that source sent during the last reporting
    interval have been lost.
 cumulative number of packets lost: 24 bits
    The total number of RTP data packets from source SSRC_n that have
    been lost since the beginning of reception.  This number is
    defined to be the number of packets expected less the number of
    packets actually received, where the number of packets received
    includes any which are late or duplicates.  Thus, packets that
    arrive late are not counted as lost, and the loss may be negative
    if there are duplicates.  The number of packets expected is
    defined to be the extended last sequence number received, as
    defined next, less the initial sequence number received.  This may
    be calculated as shown in Appendix A.3.
 extended highest sequence number received: 32 bits
    The low 16 bits contain the highest sequence number received in an
    RTP data packet from source SSRC_n, and the most significant 16
    bits extend that sequence number with the corresponding count of
    sequence number cycles, which may be maintained according to the
    algorithm in Appendix A.1.  Note that different receivers within
    the same session will generate different extensions to the
    sequence number if their start times differ significantly.
 interarrival jitter: 32 bits
    An estimate of the statistical variance of the RTP data packet
    interarrival time, measured in timestamp units and expressed as an
    unsigned integer.  The interarrival jitter J is defined to be the
    mean deviation (smoothed absolute value) of the difference D in
    packet spacing at the receiver compared to the sender for a pair
    of packets.  As shown in the equation below, this is equivalent to
    the difference in the "relative transit time" for the two packets;

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 39] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

    the relative transit time is the difference between a packet's RTP
    timestamp and the receiver's clock at the time of arrival,
    measured in the same units.
    If Si is the RTP timestamp from packet i, and Ri is the time of
    arrival in RTP timestamp units for packet i, then for two packets
    i and j, D may be expressed as
       D(i,j) = (Rj - Ri) - (Sj - Si) = (Rj - Sj) - (Ri - Si)
    The interarrival jitter SHOULD be calculated continuously as each
    data packet i is received from source SSRC_n, using this
    difference D for that packet and the previous packet i-1 in order
    of arrival (not necessarily in sequence), according to the formula
       J(i) = J(i-1) + (|D(i-1,i)| - J(i-1))/16
    Whenever a reception report is issued, the current value of J is
    sampled.
    The jitter calculation MUST conform to the formula specified here
    in order to allow profile-independent monitors to make valid
    interpretations of reports coming from different implementations.
    This algorithm is the optimal first-order estimator and the gain
    parameter 1/16 gives a good noise reduction ratio while
    maintaining a reasonable rate of convergence [22].  A sample
    implementation is shown in Appendix A.8.  See Section 6.4.4 for a
    discussion of the effects of varying packet duration and delay
    before transmission.
 last SR timestamp (LSR): 32 bits
    The middle 32 bits out of 64 in the NTP timestamp (as explained in
    Section 4) received as part of the most recent RTCP sender report
    (SR) packet from source SSRC_n.  If no SR has been received yet,
    the field is set to zero.
 delay since last SR (DLSR): 32 bits
    The delay, expressed in units of 1/65536 seconds, between
    receiving the last SR packet from source SSRC_n and sending this
    reception report block.  If no SR packet has been received yet
    from SSRC_n, the DLSR field is set to zero.
    Let SSRC_r denote the receiver issuing this receiver report.
    Source SSRC_n can compute the round-trip propagation delay to
    SSRC_r by recording the time A when this reception report block is
    received.  It calculates the total round-trip time A-LSR using the
    last SR timestamp (LSR) field, and then subtracting this field to
    leave the round-trip propagation delay as (A - LSR - DLSR).  This

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 40] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

    is illustrated in Fig. 2.  Times are shown in both a hexadecimal
    representation of the 32-bit fields and the equivalent floating-
    point decimal representation.  Colons indicate a 32-bit field
    divided into a 16-bit integer part and 16-bit fraction part.
    This may be used as an approximate measure of distance to cluster
    receivers, although some links have very asymmetric delays.
 [10 Nov 1995 11:33:25.125 UTC]       [10 Nov 1995 11:33:36.5 UTC]
 n                 SR(n)              A=b710:8000 (46864.500 s)
 ---------------------------------------------------------------->
                    v                 ^
 ntp_sec =0xb44db705 v               ^ dlsr=0x0005:4000 (    5.250s)
 ntp_frac=0x20000000  v             ^  lsr =0xb705:2000 (46853.125s)
   (3024992005.125 s)  v           ^
 r                      v         ^ RR(n)
 ---------------------------------------------------------------->
                        |<-DLSR->|
                         (5.250 s)
 A     0xb710:8000 (46864.500 s)
 DLSR -0x0005:4000 (    5.250 s)
 LSR  -0xb705:2000 (46853.125 s)
 -------------------------------
 delay 0x0006:2000 (    6.125 s)
         Figure 2: Example for round-trip time computation

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 41] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

6.4.2 RR: Receiver Report RTCP Packet

      0                   1                   2                   3
      0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
     +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

header |V=2|P| RC | PT=RR=201 | length |

     +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
     |                     SSRC of packet sender                     |
     +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+

report | SSRC_1 (SSRC of first source) | block +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

1    | fraction lost |       cumulative number of packets lost       |
     +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
     |           extended highest sequence number received           |
     +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
     |                      interarrival jitter                      |
     +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
     |                         last SR (LSR)                         |
     +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
     |                   delay since last SR (DLSR)                  |
     +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+

report | SSRC_2 (SSRC of second source) | block +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

2    :                               ...                             :
     +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
     |                  profile-specific extensions                  |
     +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
 The format of the receiver report (RR) packet is the same as that of
 the SR packet except that the packet type field contains the constant
 201 and the five words of sender information are omitted (these are
 the NTP and RTP timestamps and sender's packet and octet counts).
 The remaining fields have the same meaning as for the SR packet.
 An empty RR packet (RC = 0) MUST be put at the head of a compound
 RTCP packet when there is no data transmission or reception to
 report.

6.4.3 Extending the Sender and Receiver Reports

 A profile SHOULD define profile-specific extensions to the sender
 report and receiver report if there is additional information that
 needs to be reported regularly about the sender or receivers.  This
 method SHOULD be used in preference to defining another RTCP packet
 type because it requires less overhead:
 o  fewer octets in the packet (no RTCP header or SSRC field);

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 42] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 o  simpler and faster parsing because applications running under that
    profile would be programmed to always expect the extension fields
    in the directly accessible location after the reception reports.
 The extension is a fourth section in the sender- or receiver-report
 packet which comes at the end after the reception report blocks, if
 any.  If additional sender information is required, then for sender
 reports it would be included first in the extension section, but for
 receiver reports it would not be present.  If information about
 receivers is to be included, that data SHOULD be structured as an
 array of blocks parallel to the existing array of reception report
 blocks; that is, the number of blocks would be indicated by the RC
 field.

6.4.4 Analyzing Sender and Receiver Reports

 It is expected that reception quality feedback will be useful not
 only for the sender but also for other receivers and third-party
 monitors.  The sender may modify its transmissions based on the
 feedback; receivers can determine whether problems are local,
 regional or global; network managers may use profile-independent
 monitors that receive only the RTCP packets and not the corresponding
 RTP data packets to evaluate the performance of their networks for
 multicast distribution.
 Cumulative counts are used in both the sender information and
 receiver report blocks so that differences may be calculated between
 any two reports to make measurements over both short and long time
 periods, and to provide resilience against the loss of a report.  The
 difference between the last two reports received can be used to
 estimate the recent quality of the distribution.  The NTP timestamp
 is included so that rates may be calculated from these differences
 over the interval between two reports.  Since that timestamp is
 independent of the clock rate for the data encoding, it is possible
 to implement encoding- and profile-independent quality monitors.
 An example calculation is the packet loss rate over the interval
 between two reception reports.  The difference in the cumulative
 number of packets lost gives the number lost during that interval.
 The difference in the extended last sequence numbers received gives
 the number of packets expected during the interval.  The ratio of
 these two is the packet loss fraction over the interval.  This ratio
 should equal the fraction lost field if the two reports are
 consecutive, but otherwise it may not.  The loss rate per second can
 be obtained by dividing the loss fraction by the difference in NTP
 timestamps, expressed in seconds.  The number of packets received is
 the number of packets expected minus the number lost.  The number of

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 43] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 packets expected may also be used to judge the statistical validity
 of any loss estimates.  For example, 1 out of 5 packets lost has a
 lower significance than 200 out of 1000.
 From the sender information, a third-party monitor can calculate the
 average payload data rate and the average packet rate over an
 interval without receiving the data.  Taking the ratio of the two
 gives the average payload size.  If it can be assumed that packet
 loss is independent of packet size, then the number of packets
 received by a particular receiver times the average payload size (or
 the corresponding packet size) gives the apparent throughput
 available to that receiver.
 In addition to the cumulative counts which allow long-term packet
 loss measurements using differences between reports, the fraction
 lost field provides a short-term measurement from a single report.
 This becomes more important as the size of a session scales up enough
 that reception state information might not be kept for all receivers
 or the interval between reports becomes long enough that only one
 report might have been received from a particular receiver.
 The interarrival jitter field provides a second short-term measure of
 network congestion.  Packet loss tracks persistent congestion while
 the jitter measure tracks transient congestion.  The jitter measure
 may indicate congestion before it leads to packet loss.  The
 interarrival jitter field is only a snapshot of the jitter at the
 time of a report and is not intended to be taken quantitatively.
 Rather, it is intended for comparison across a number of reports from
 one receiver over time or from multiple receivers, e.g., within a
 single network, at the same time.  To allow comparison across
 receivers, it is important the the jitter be calculated according to
 the same formula by all receivers.
 Because the jitter calculation is based on the RTP timestamp which
 represents the instant when the first data in the packet was sampled,
 any variation in the delay between that sampling instant and the time
 the packet is transmitted will affect the resulting jitter that is
 calculated.  Such a variation in delay would occur for audio packets
 of varying duration.  It will also occur for video encodings because
 the timestamp is the same for all the packets of one frame but those
 packets are not all transmitted at the same time.  The variation in
 delay until transmission does reduce the accuracy of the jitter
 calculation as a measure of the behavior of the network by itself,
 but it is appropriate to include considering that the receiver buffer
 must accommodate it.  When the jitter calculation is used as a
 comparative measure, the (constant) component due to variation in
 delay until transmission subtracts out so that a change in the

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 44] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 network jitter component can then be observed unless it is relatively
 small.  If the change is small, then it is likely to be
 inconsequential.

6.5 SDES: Source Description RTCP Packet

      0                   1                   2                   3
      0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
     +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

header |V=2|P| SC | PT=SDES=202 | length |

     +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+

chunk | SSRC/CSRC_1 |

1    +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
     |                           SDES items                          |
     |                              ...                              |
     +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+

chunk | SSRC/CSRC_2 |

2    +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
     |                           SDES items                          |
     |                              ...                              |
     +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
 The SDES packet is a three-level structure composed of a header and
 zero or more chunks, each of which is composed of items describing
 the source identified in that chunk.  The items are described
 individually in subsequent sections.
 version (V), padding (P), length:
    As described for the SR packet (see Section 6.4.1).
 packet type (PT): 8 bits
    Contains the constant 202 to identify this as an RTCP SDES packet.
 source count (SC): 5 bits
    The number of SSRC/CSRC chunks contained in this SDES packet.  A
    value of zero is valid but useless.
 Each chunk consists of an SSRC/CSRC identifier followed by a list of
 zero or more items, which carry information about the SSRC/CSRC.
 Each chunk starts on a 32-bit boundary.  Each item consists of an 8-
 bit type field, an 8-bit octet count describing the length of the
 text (thus, not including this two-octet header), and the text
 itself.  Note that the text can be no longer than 255 octets, but
 this is consistent with the need to limit RTCP bandwidth consumption.

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 45] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 The text is encoded according to the UTF-8 encoding specified in RFC
 2279 [5].  US-ASCII is a subset of this encoding and requires no
 additional encoding.  The presence of multi-octet encodings is
 indicated by setting the most significant bit of a character to a
 value of one.
 Items are contiguous, i.e., items are not individually padded to a
 32-bit boundary.  Text is not null terminated because some multi-
 octet encodings include null octets.  The list of items in each chunk
 MUST be terminated by one or more null octets, the first of which is
 interpreted as an item type of zero to denote the end of the list.
 No length octet follows the null item type octet, but additional null
 octets MUST be included if needed to pad until the next 32-bit
 boundary.  Note that this padding is separate from that indicated by
 the P bit in the RTCP header.  A chunk with zero items (four null
 octets) is valid but useless.
 End systems send one SDES packet containing their own source
 identifier (the same as the SSRC in the fixed RTP header).  A mixer
 sends one SDES packet containing a chunk for each contributing source
 from which it is receiving SDES information, or multiple complete
 SDES packets in the format above if there are more than 31 such
 sources (see Section 7).
 The SDES items currently defined are described in the next sections.
 Only the CNAME item is mandatory.  Some items shown here may be
 useful only for particular profiles, but the item types are all
 assigned from one common space to promote shared use and to simplify
 profile-independent applications.  Additional items may be defined in
 a profile by registering the type numbers with IANA as described in
 Section 15.

6.5.1 CNAME: Canonical End-Point Identifier SDES Item

  0                   1                   2                   3
  0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
 |    CNAME=1    |     length    | user and domain name        ...
 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
 The CNAME identifier has the following properties:
 o  Because the randomly allocated SSRC identifier may change if a
    conflict is discovered or if a program is restarted, the CNAME
    item MUST be included to provide the binding from the SSRC
    identifier to an identifier for the source (sender or receiver)
    that remains constant.

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 46] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 o  Like the SSRC identifier, the CNAME identifier SHOULD also be
    unique among all participants within one RTP session.
 o  To provide a binding across multiple media tools used by one
    participant in a set of related RTP sessions, the CNAME SHOULD be
    fixed for that participant.
 o  To facilitate third-party monitoring, the CNAME SHOULD be suitable
    for either a program or a person to locate the source.
 Therefore, the CNAME SHOULD be derived algorithmically and not
 entered manually, when possible.  To meet these requirements, the
 following format SHOULD be used unless a profile specifies an
 alternate syntax or semantics.  The CNAME item SHOULD have the format
 "user@host", or "host" if a user name is not available as on single-
 user systems.  For both formats, "host" is either the fully qualified
 domain name of the host from which the real-time data originates,
 formatted according to the rules specified in RFC 1034 [6], RFC 1035
 [7] and Section 2.1 of RFC 1123 [8]; or the standard ASCII
 representation of the host's numeric address on the interface used
 for the RTP communication.  For example, the standard ASCII
 representation of an IP Version 4 address is "dotted decimal", also
 known as dotted quad, and for IP Version 6, addresses are textually
 represented as groups of hexadecimal digits separated by colons (with
 variations as detailed in RFC 3513 [23]).  Other address types are
 expected to have ASCII representations that are mutually unique.  The
 fully qualified domain name is more convenient for a human observer
 and may avoid the need to send a NAME item in addition, but it may be
 difficult or impossible to obtain reliably in some operating
 environments.  Applications that may be run in such environments
 SHOULD use the ASCII representation of the address instead.
 Examples are "doe@sleepy.example.com", "doe@192.0.2.89" or
 "doe@2201:056D::112E:144A:1E24" for a multi-user system.  On a system
 with no user name, examples would be "sleepy.example.com",
 "192.0.2.89" or "2201:056D::112E:144A:1E24".
 The user name SHOULD be in a form that a program such as "finger" or
 "talk" could use, i.e., it typically is the login name rather than
 the personal name.  The host name is not necessarily identical to the
 one in the participant's electronic mail address.
 This syntax will not provide unique identifiers for each source if an
 application permits a user to generate multiple sources from one
 host.  Such an application would have to rely on the SSRC to further
 identify the source, or the profile for that application would have
 to specify additional syntax for the CNAME identifier.

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 47] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 If each application creates its CNAME independently, the resulting
 CNAMEs may not be identical as would be required to provide a binding
 across multiple media tools belonging to one participant in a set of
 related RTP sessions.  If cross-media binding is required, it may be
 necessary for the CNAME of each tool to be externally configured with
 the same value by a coordination tool.
 Application writers should be aware that private network address
 assignments such as the Net-10 assignment proposed in RFC 1918 [24]
 may create network addresses that are not globally unique.  This
 would lead to non-unique CNAMEs if hosts with private addresses and
 no direct IP connectivity to the public Internet have their RTP
 packets forwarded to the public Internet through an RTP-level
 translator.  (See also RFC 1627 [25].)  To handle this case,
 applications MAY provide a means to configure a unique CNAME, but the
 burden is on the translator to translate CNAMEs from private
 addresses to public addresses if necessary to keep private addresses
 from being exposed.

6.5.2 NAME: User Name SDES Item

  0                   1                   2                   3
  0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
 |     NAME=2    |     length    | common name of source       ...
 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
 This is the real name used to describe the source, e.g., "John Doe,
 Bit Recycler".  It may be in any form desired by the user.  For
 applications such as conferencing, this form of name may be the most
 desirable for display in participant lists, and therefore might be
 sent most frequently of those items other than CNAME.  Profiles MAY
 establish such priorities.  The NAME value is expected to remain
 constant at least for the duration of a session.  It SHOULD NOT be
 relied upon to be unique among all participants in the session.

6.5.3 EMAIL: Electronic Mail Address SDES Item

  0                   1                   2                   3
  0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
 |    EMAIL=3    |     length    | email address of source     ...
 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
 The email address is formatted according to RFC 2822 [9], for
 example, "John.Doe@example.com".  The EMAIL value is expected to
 remain constant for the duration of a session.

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 48] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

6.5.4 PHONE: Phone Number SDES Item

  0                   1                   2                   3
  0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
 |    PHONE=4    |     length    | phone number of source      ...
 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
 The phone number SHOULD be formatted with the plus sign replacing the
 international access code.  For example, "+1 908 555 1212" for a
 number in the United States.

6.5.5 LOC: Geographic User Location SDES Item

  0                   1                   2                   3
  0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
 |     LOC=5     |     length    | geographic location of site ...
 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
 Depending on the application, different degrees of detail are
 appropriate for this item.  For conference applications, a string
 like "Murray Hill, New Jersey" may be sufficient, while, for an
 active badge system, strings like "Room 2A244, AT&T BL MH" might be
 appropriate.  The degree of detail is left to the implementation
 and/or user, but format and content MAY be prescribed by a profile.
 The LOC value is expected to remain constant for the duration of a
 session, except for mobile hosts.

6.5.6 TOOL: Application or Tool Name SDES Item

  0                   1                   2                   3
  0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
 |     TOOL=6    |     length    |name/version of source appl. ...
 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
 A string giving the name and possibly version of the application
 generating the stream, e.g., "videotool 1.2".  This information may
 be useful for debugging purposes and is similar to the Mailer or
 Mail-System-Version SMTP headers.  The TOOL value is expected to
 remain constant for the duration of the session.

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 49] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

6.5.7 NOTE: Notice/Status SDES Item

  0                   1                   2                   3
  0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
 |     NOTE=7    |     length    | note about the source       ...
 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
 The following semantics are suggested for this item, but these or
 other semantics MAY be explicitly defined by a profile.  The NOTE
 item is intended for transient messages describing the current state
 of the source, e.g., "on the phone, can't talk".  Or, during a
 seminar, this item might be used to convey the title of the talk.  It
 should be used only to carry exceptional information and SHOULD NOT
 be included routinely by all participants because this would slow
 down the rate at which reception reports and CNAME are sent, thus
 impairing the performance of the protocol.  In particular, it SHOULD
 NOT be included as an item in a user's configuration file nor
 automatically generated as in a quote-of-the-day.
 Since the NOTE item may be important to display while it is active,
 the rate at which other non-CNAME items such as NAME are transmitted
 might be reduced so that the NOTE item can take that part of the RTCP
 bandwidth.  When the transient message becomes inactive, the NOTE
 item SHOULD continue to be transmitted a few times at the same
 repetition rate but with a string of length zero to signal the
 receivers.  However, receivers SHOULD also consider the NOTE item
 inactive if it is not received for a small multiple of the repetition
 rate, or perhaps 20-30 RTCP intervals.

6.5.8 PRIV: Private Extensions SDES Item

   0                   1                   2                   3
   0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
  +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
  |     PRIV=8    |     length    | prefix length |prefix string...
  +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
  ...             |                  value string               ...
  +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
 This item is used to define experimental or application-specific SDES
 extensions.  The item contains a prefix consisting of a length-string
 pair, followed by the value string filling the remainder of the item
 and carrying the desired information.  The prefix length field is 8
 bits long.  The prefix string is a name chosen by the person defining
 the PRIV item to be unique with respect to other PRIV items this
 application might receive.  The application creator might choose to
 use the application name plus an additional subtype identification if

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 50] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 needed.  Alternatively, it is RECOMMENDED that others choose a name
 based on the entity they represent, then coordinate the use of the
 name within that entity.
 Note that the prefix consumes some space within the item's total
 length of 255 octets, so the prefix should be kept as short as
 possible.  This facility and the constrained RTCP bandwidth SHOULD
 NOT be overloaded; it is not intended to satisfy all the control
 communication requirements of all applications.
 SDES PRIV prefixes will not be registered by IANA.  If some form of
 the PRIV item proves to be of general utility, it SHOULD instead be
 assigned a regular SDES item type registered with IANA so that no
 prefix is required.  This simplifies use and increases transmission
 efficiency.

6.6 BYE: Goodbye RTCP Packet

     0                   1                   2                   3
     0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
    +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
    |V=2|P|    SC   |   PT=BYE=203  |             length            |
    +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
    |                           SSRC/CSRC                           |
    +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
    :                              ...                              :
    +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+

(opt) | length | reason for leaving …

    +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
 The BYE packet indicates that one or more sources are no longer
 active.
 version (V), padding (P), length:
    As described for the SR packet (see Section 6.4.1).
 packet type (PT): 8 bits
    Contains the constant 203 to identify this as an RTCP BYE packet.
 source count (SC): 5 bits
    The number of SSRC/CSRC identifiers included in this BYE packet.
    A count value of zero is valid, but useless.
 The rules for when a BYE packet should be sent are specified in
 Sections 6.3.7 and 8.2.

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 51] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 If a BYE packet is received by a mixer, the mixer SHOULD forward the
 BYE packet with the SSRC/CSRC identifier(s) unchanged.  If a mixer
 shuts down, it SHOULD send a BYE packet listing all contributing
 sources it handles, as well as its own SSRC identifier.  Optionally,
 the BYE packet MAY include an 8-bit octet count followed by that many
 octets of text indicating the reason for leaving, e.g., "camera
 malfunction" or "RTP loop detected".  The string has the same
 encoding as that described for SDES.  If the string fills the packet
 to the next 32-bit boundary, the string is not null terminated.  If
 not, the BYE packet MUST be padded with null octets to the next 32-
 bit boundary.  This padding is separate from that indicated by the P
 bit in the RTCP header.

6.7 APP: Application-Defined RTCP Packet

  0                   1                   2                   3
  0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
 |V=2|P| subtype |   PT=APP=204  |             length            |
 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
 |                           SSRC/CSRC                           |
 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
 |                          name (ASCII)                         |
 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
 |                   application-dependent data                ...
 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
 The APP packet is intended for experimental use as new applications
 and new features are developed, without requiring packet type value
 registration.  APP packets with unrecognized names SHOULD be ignored.
 After testing and if wider use is justified, it is RECOMMENDED that
 each APP packet be redefined without the subtype and name fields and
 registered with IANA using an RTCP packet type.
 version (V), padding (P), length:
    As described for the SR packet (see Section 6.4.1).
 subtype: 5 bits
    May be used as a subtype to allow a set of APP packets to be
    defined under one unique name, or for any application-dependent
    data.
 packet type (PT): 8 bits
    Contains the constant 204 to identify this as an RTCP APP packet.

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 52] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 name: 4 octets
    A name chosen by the person defining the set of APP packets to be
    unique with respect to other APP packets this application might
    receive.  The application creator might choose to use the
    application name, and then coordinate the allocation of subtype
    values to others who want to define new packet types for the
    application.  Alternatively, it is RECOMMENDED that others choose
    a name based on the entity they represent, then coordinate the use
    of the name within that entity.  The name is interpreted as a
    sequence of four ASCII characters, with uppercase and lowercase
    characters treated as distinct.
 application-dependent data: variable length
    Application-dependent data may or may not appear in an APP packet.
    It is interpreted by the application and not RTP itself.  It MUST
    be a multiple of 32 bits long.

7. RTP Translators and Mixers

 In addition to end systems, RTP supports the notion of "translators"
 and "mixers", which could be considered as "intermediate systems" at
 the RTP level.  Although this support adds some complexity to the
 protocol, the need for these functions has been clearly established
 by experiments with multicast audio and video applications in the
 Internet.  Example uses of translators and mixers given in Section
 2.3 stem from the presence of firewalls and low bandwidth
 connections, both of which are likely to remain.

7.1 General Description

 An RTP translator/mixer connects two or more transport-level
 "clouds".  Typically, each cloud is defined by a common network and
 transport protocol (e.g., IP/UDP) plus a multicast address and
 transport level destination port or a pair of unicast addresses and
 ports.  (Network-level protocol translators, such as IP version 4 to
 IP version 6, may be present within a cloud invisibly to RTP.)  One
 system may serve as a translator or mixer for a number of RTP
 sessions, but each is considered a logically separate entity.
 In order to avoid creating a loop when a translator or mixer is
 installed, the following rules MUST be observed:
 o  Each of the clouds connected by translators and mixers
    participating in one RTP session either MUST be distinct from all
    the others in at least one of these parameters (protocol, address,
    port), or MUST be isolated at the network level from the others.

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 53] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 o  A derivative of the first rule is that there MUST NOT be multiple
    translators or mixers connected in parallel unless by some
    arrangement they partition the set of sources to be forwarded.
 Similarly, all RTP end systems that can communicate through one or
 more RTP translators or mixers share the same SSRC space, that is,
 the SSRC identifiers MUST be unique among all these end systems.
 Section 8.2 describes the collision resolution algorithm by which
 SSRC identifiers are kept unique and loops are detected.
 There may be many varieties of translators and mixers designed for
 different purposes and applications.  Some examples are to add or
 remove encryption, change the encoding of the data or the underlying
 protocols, or replicate between a multicast address and one or more
 unicast addresses.  The distinction between translators and mixers is
 that a translator passes through the data streams from different
 sources separately, whereas a mixer combines them to form one new
 stream:
 Translator: Forwards RTP packets with their SSRC identifier
    intact; this makes it possible for receivers to identify
    individual sources even though packets from all the sources pass
    through the same translator and carry the translator's network
    source address.  Some kinds of translators will pass through the
    data untouched, but others MAY change the encoding of the data and
    thus the RTP data payload type and timestamp.  If multiple data
    packets are re-encoded into one, or vice versa, a translator MUST
    assign new sequence numbers to the outgoing packets.  Losses in
    the incoming packet stream may induce corresponding gaps in the
    outgoing sequence numbers.  Receivers cannot detect the presence
    of a translator unless they know by some other means what payload
    type or transport address was used by the original source.
 Mixer: Receives streams of RTP data packets from one or more
    sources, possibly changes the data format, combines the streams in
    some manner and then forwards the combined stream.  Since the
    timing among multiple input sources will not generally be
    synchronized, the mixer will make timing adjustments among the
    streams and generate its own timing for the combined stream, so it
    is the synchronization source.  Thus, all data packets forwarded
    by a mixer MUST be marked with the mixer's own SSRC identifier.
    In order to preserve the identity of the original sources
    contributing to the mixed packet, the mixer SHOULD insert their
    SSRC identifiers into the CSRC identifier list following the fixed
    RTP header of the packet.  A mixer that is also itself a
    contributing source for some packet SHOULD explicitly include its
    own SSRC identifier in the CSRC list for that packet.

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 54] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

    For some applications, it MAY be acceptable for a mixer not to
    identify sources in the CSRC list.  However, this introduces the
    danger that loops involving those sources could not be detected.
 The advantage of a mixer over a translator for applications like
 audio is that the output bandwidth is limited to that of one source
 even when multiple sources are active on the input side.  This may be
 important for low-bandwidth links.  The disadvantage is that
 receivers on the output side don't have any control over which
 sources are passed through or muted, unless some mechanism is
 implemented for remote control of the mixer.  The regeneration of
 synchronization information by mixers also means that receivers can't
 do inter-media synchronization of the original streams.  A multi-
 media mixer could do it.
       [E1]                                    [E6]
        |                                       |
  E1:17 |                                 E6:15 |
        |                                       |   E6:15
        V  M1:48 (1,17)         M1:48 (1,17)    V   M1:48 (1,17)
       (M1)-------------><T1>-----------------><T2>-------------->[E7]
        ^                 ^     E4:47           ^   E4:47
   E2:1 |           E4:47 |                     |   M3:89 (64,45)
        |                 |                     |
       [E2]              [E4]     M3:89 (64,45) |
                                                |        legend:
 [E3] --------->(M2)----------->(M3)------------|        [End system]
        E3:64        M2:12 (64)  ^                       (Mixer)
                                 | E5:45                 <Translator>
                                 |
                                [E5]          source: SSRC (CSRCs)
                                              ------------------->
 Figure 3: Sample RTP network with end systems, mixers and translators
 A collection of mixers and translators is shown in Fig. 3 to
 illustrate their effect on SSRC and CSRC identifiers.  In the figure,
 end systems are shown as rectangles (named E), translators as
 triangles (named T) and mixers as ovals (named M).  The notation "M1:
 48(1,17)" designates a packet originating a mixer M1, identified by
 M1's (random) SSRC value of 48 and two CSRC identifiers, 1 and 17,
 copied from the SSRC identifiers of packets from E1 and E2.

7.2 RTCP Processing in Translators

 In addition to forwarding data packets, perhaps modified, translators
 and mixers MUST also process RTCP packets.  In many cases, they will
 take apart the compound RTCP packets received from end systems to

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 55] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 aggregate SDES information and to modify the SR or RR packets.
 Retransmission of this information may be triggered by the packet
 arrival or by the RTCP interval timer of the translator or mixer
 itself.
 A translator that does not modify the data packets, for example one
 that just replicates between a multicast address and a unicast
 address, MAY simply forward RTCP packets unmodified as well.  A
 translator that transforms the payload in some way MUST make
 corresponding transformations in the SR and RR information so that it
 still reflects the characteristics of the data and the reception
 quality.  These translators MUST NOT simply forward RTCP packets.  In
 general, a translator SHOULD NOT aggregate SR and RR packets from
 different sources into one packet since that would reduce the
 accuracy of the propagation delay measurements based on the LSR and
 DLSR fields.
 SR sender information:  A translator does not generate its own
    sender information, but forwards the SR packets received from one
    cloud to the others.  The SSRC is left intact but the sender
    information MUST be modified if required by the translation.  If a
    translator changes the data encoding, it MUST change the "sender's
    byte count" field.  If it also combines several data packets into
    one output packet, it MUST change the "sender's packet count"
    field.  If it changes the timestamp frequency, it MUST change the
    "RTP timestamp" field in the SR packet.
 SR/RR reception report blocks:  A translator forwards reception
    reports received from one cloud to the others.  Note that these
    flow in the direction opposite to the data.  The SSRC is left
    intact.  If a translator combines several data packets into one
    output packet, and therefore changes the sequence numbers, it MUST
    make the inverse manipulation for the packet loss fields and the
    "extended last sequence number" field.  This may be complex.  In
    the extreme case, there may be no meaningful way to translate the
    reception reports, so the translator MAY pass on no reception
    report at all or a synthetic report based on its own reception.
    The general rule is to do what makes sense for a particular
    translation.
    A translator does not require an SSRC identifier of its own, but
    MAY choose to allocate one for the purpose of sending reports
    about what it has received.  These would be sent to all the
    connected clouds, each corresponding to the translation of the
    data stream as sent to that cloud, since reception reports are
    normally multicast to all participants.

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 56] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 SDES:  Translators typically forward without change the SDES
    information they receive from one cloud to the others, but MAY,
    for example, decide to filter non-CNAME SDES information if
    bandwidth is limited.  The CNAMEs MUST be forwarded to allow SSRC
    identifier collision detection to work.  A translator that
    generates its own RR packets MUST send SDES CNAME information
    about itself to the same clouds that it sends those RR packets.
 BYE:  Translators forward BYE packets unchanged.  A translator
    that is about to cease forwarding packets SHOULD send a BYE packet
    to each connected cloud containing all the SSRC identifiers that
    were previously being forwarded to that cloud, including the
    translator's own SSRC identifier if it sent reports of its own.
 APP:  Translators forward APP packets unchanged.

7.3 RTCP Processing in Mixers

 Since a mixer generates a new data stream of its own, it does not
 pass through SR or RR packets at all and instead generates new
 information for both sides.
 SR sender information:  A mixer does not pass through sender
    information from the sources it mixes because the characteristics
    of the source streams are lost in the mix.  As a synchronization
    source, the mixer SHOULD generate its own SR packets with sender
    information about the mixed data stream and send them in the same
    direction as the mixed stream.
 SR/RR reception report blocks:  A mixer generates its own
    reception reports for sources in each cloud and sends them out
    only to the same cloud.  It MUST NOT send these reception reports
    to the other clouds and MUST NOT forward reception reports from
    one cloud to the others because the sources would not be SSRCs
    there (only CSRCs).
 SDES:  Mixers typically forward without change the SDES
    information they receive from one cloud to the others, but MAY,
    for example, decide to filter non-CNAME SDES information if
    bandwidth is limited.  The CNAMEs MUST be forwarded to allow SSRC
    identifier collision detection to work.  (An identifier in a CSRC
    list generated by a mixer might collide with an SSRC identifier
    generated by an end system.)  A mixer MUST send SDES CNAME
    information about itself to the same clouds that it sends SR or RR
    packets.

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 57] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

    Since mixers do not forward SR or RR packets, they will typically
    be extracting SDES packets from a compound RTCP packet.  To
    minimize overhead, chunks from the SDES packets MAY be aggregated
    into a single SDES packet which is then stacked on an SR or RR
    packet originating from the mixer.  A mixer which aggregates SDES
    packets will use more RTCP bandwidth than an individual source
    because the compound packets will be longer, but that is
    appropriate since the mixer represents multiple sources.
    Similarly, a mixer which passes through SDES packets as they are
    received will be transmitting RTCP packets at higher than the
    single source rate, but again that is correct since the packets
    come from multiple sources.  The RTCP packet rate may be different
    on each side of the mixer.
    A mixer that does not insert CSRC identifiers MAY also refrain
    from forwarding SDES CNAMEs.  In this case, the SSRC identifier
    spaces in the two clouds are independent.  As mentioned earlier,
    this mode of operation creates a danger that loops can't be
    detected.
 BYE:  Mixers MUST forward BYE packets.  A mixer that is about to
    cease forwarding packets SHOULD send a BYE packet to each
    connected cloud containing all the SSRC identifiers that were
    previously being forwarded to that cloud, including the mixer's
    own SSRC identifier if it sent reports of its own.
 APP:  The treatment of APP packets by mixers is application-specific.

7.4 Cascaded Mixers

 An RTP session may involve a collection of mixers and translators as
 shown in Fig. 3.  If two mixers are cascaded, such as M2 and M3 in
 the figure, packets received by a mixer may already have been mixed
 and may include a CSRC list with multiple identifiers.  The second
 mixer SHOULD build the CSRC list for the outgoing packet using the
 CSRC identifiers from already-mixed input packets and the SSRC
 identifiers from unmixed input packets.  This is shown in the output
 arc from mixer M3 labeled M3:89(64,45) in the figure.  As in the case
 of mixers that are not cascaded, if the resulting CSRC list has more
 than 15 identifiers, the remainder cannot be included.

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 58] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

8. SSRC Identifier Allocation and Use

 The SSRC identifier carried in the RTP header and in various fields
 of RTCP packets is a random 32-bit number that is required to be
 globally unique within an RTP session.  It is crucial that the number
 be chosen with care in order that participants on the same network or
 starting at the same time are not likely to choose the same number.
 It is not sufficient to use the local network address (such as an
 IPv4 address) for the identifier because the address may not be
 unique.  Since RTP translators and mixers enable interoperation among
 multiple networks with different address spaces, the allocation
 patterns for addresses within two spaces might result in a much
 higher rate of collision than would occur with random allocation.
 Multiple sources running on one host would also conflict.
 It is also not sufficient to obtain an SSRC identifier simply by
 calling random() without carefully initializing the state.  An
 example of how to generate a random identifier is presented in
 Appendix A.6.

8.1 Probability of Collision

 Since the identifiers are chosen randomly, it is possible that two or
 more sources will choose the same number.  Collision occurs with the
 highest probability when all sources are started simultaneously, for
 example when triggered automatically by some session management
 event.  If N is the number of sources and L the length of the
 identifier (here, 32 bits), the probability that two sources
 independently pick the same value can be approximated for large N
 [26] as 1 - exp(-N**2 / 2**(L+1)).  For N=1000, the probability is
 roughly 10**-4.
 The typical collision probability is much lower than the worst-case
 above.  When one new source joins an RTP session in which all the
 other sources already have unique identifiers, the probability of
 collision is just the fraction of numbers used out of the space.
 Again, if N is the number of sources and L the length of the
 identifier, the probability of collision is N / 2**L.  For N=1000,
 the probability is roughly 2*10**-7.
 The probability of collision is further reduced by the opportunity
 for a new source to receive packets from other participants before
 sending its first packet (either data or control).  If the new source
 keeps track of the other participants (by SSRC identifier), then

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 59] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 before transmitting its first packet the new source can verify that
 its identifier does not conflict with any that have been received, or
 else choose again.

8.2 Collision Resolution and Loop Detection

 Although the probability of SSRC identifier collision is low, all RTP
 implementations MUST be prepared to detect collisions and take the
 appropriate actions to resolve them.  If a source discovers at any
 time that another source is using the same SSRC identifier as its
 own, it MUST send an RTCP BYE packet for the old identifier and
 choose another random one.  (As explained below, this step is taken
 only once in case of a loop.)  If a receiver discovers that two other
 sources are colliding, it MAY keep the packets from one and discard
 the packets from the other when this can be detected by different
 source transport addresses or CNAMEs.  The two sources are expected
 to resolve the collision so that the situation doesn't last.
 Because the random SSRC identifiers are kept globally unique for each
 RTP session, they can also be used to detect loops that may be
 introduced by mixers or translators.  A loop causes duplication of
 data and control information, either unmodified or possibly mixed, as
 in the following examples:
 o  A translator may incorrectly forward a packet to the same
    multicast group from which it has received the packet, either
    directly or through a chain of translators.  In that case, the
    same packet appears several times, originating from different
    network sources.
 o  Two translators incorrectly set up in parallel, i.e., with the
    same multicast groups on both sides, would both forward packets
    from one multicast group to the other.  Unidirectional translators
    would produce two copies; bidirectional translators would form a
    loop.
 o  A mixer can close a loop by sending to the same transport
    destination upon which it receives packets, either directly or
    through another mixer or translator.  In this case a source might
    show up both as an SSRC on a data packet and a CSRC in a mixed
    data packet.
 A source may discover that its own packets are being looped, or that
 packets from another source are being looped (a third-party loop).
 Both loops and collisions in the random selection of a source
 identifier result in packets arriving with the same SSRC identifier
 but a different source transport address, which may be that of the
 end system originating the packet or an intermediate system.

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 60] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 Therefore, if a source changes its source transport address, it MAY
 also choose a new SSRC identifier to avoid being interpreted as a
 looped source.  (This is not MUST because in some applications of RTP
 sources may be expected to change addresses during a session.)  Note
 that if a translator restarts and consequently changes the source
 transport address (e.g., changes the UDP source port number) on which
 it forwards packets, then all those packets will appear to receivers
 to be looped because the SSRC identifiers are applied by the original
 source and will not change.  This problem can be avoided by keeping
 the source transport address fixed across restarts, but in any case
 will be resolved after a timeout at the receivers.
 Loops or collisions occurring on the far side of a translator or
 mixer cannot be detected using the source transport address if all
 copies of the packets go through the translator or mixer, however,
 collisions may still be detected when chunks from two RTCP SDES
 packets contain the same SSRC identifier but different CNAMEs.
 To detect and resolve these conflicts, an RTP implementation MUST
 include an algorithm similar to the one described below, though the
 implementation MAY choose a different policy for which packets from
 colliding third-party sources are kept.  The algorithm described
 below ignores packets from a new source or loop that collide with an
 established source.  It resolves collisions with the participant's
 own SSRC identifier by sending an RTCP BYE for the old identifier and
 choosing a new one.  However, when the collision was induced by a
 loop of the participant's own packets, the algorithm will choose a
 new identifier only once and thereafter ignore packets from the
 looping source transport address.  This is required to avoid a flood
 of BYE packets.
 This algorithm requires keeping a table indexed by the source
 identifier and containing the source transport addresses from the
 first RTP packet and first RTCP packet received with that identifier,
 along with other state for that source.  Two source transport
 addresses are required since, for example, the UDP source port
 numbers may be different on RTP and RTCP packets.  However, it may be
 assumed that the network address is the same in both source transport
 addresses.
 Each SSRC or CSRC identifier received in an RTP or RTCP packet is
 looked up in the source identifier table in order to process that
 data or control information.  The source transport address from the
 packet is compared to the corresponding source transport address in
 the table to detect a loop or collision if they don't match.  For
 control packets, each element with its own SSRC identifier, for
 example an SDES chunk, requires a separate lookup.  (The SSRC
 identifier in a reception report block is an exception because it

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 61] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 identifies a source heard by the reporter, and that SSRC identifier
 is unrelated to the source transport address of the RTCP packet sent
 by the reporter.)  If the SSRC or CSRC is not found, a new entry is
 created.  These table entries are removed when an RTCP BYE packet is
 received with the corresponding SSRC identifier and validated by a
 matching source transport address, or after no packets have arrived
 for a relatively long time (see Section 6.2.1).
 Note that if two sources on the same host are transmitting with the
 same source identifier at the time a receiver begins operation, it
 would be possible that the first RTP packet received came from one of
 the sources while the first RTCP packet received came from the other.
 This would cause the wrong RTCP information to be associated with the
 RTP data, but this situation should be sufficiently rare and harmless
 that it may be disregarded.
 In order to track loops of the participant's own data packets, the
 implementation MUST also keep a separate list of source transport
 addresses (not identifiers) that have been found to be conflicting.
 As in the source identifier table, two source transport addresses
 MUST be kept to separately track conflicting RTP and RTCP packets.
 Note that the conflicting address list should be short, usually
 empty.  Each element in this list stores the source addresses plus
 the time when the most recent conflicting packet was received.  An
 element MAY be removed from the list when no conflicting packet has
 arrived from that source for a time on the order of 10 RTCP report
 intervals (see Section 6.2).
 For the algorithm as shown, it is assumed that the participant's own
 source identifier and state are included in the source identifier
 table.  The algorithm could be restructured to first make a separate
 comparison against the participant's own source identifier.
    if (SSRC or CSRC identifier is not found in the source
        identifier table) {
        create a new entry storing the data or control source
            transport address, the SSRC or CSRC and other state;
    }
    /* Identifier is found in the table */
    else if (table entry was created on receipt of a control packet
             and this is the first data packet or vice versa) {
        store the source transport address from this packet;
    }
    else if (source transport address from the packet does not match
             the one saved in the table entry for this identifier) {

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 62] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

        /* An identifier collision or a loop is indicated */
        if (source identifier is not the participant's own) {
            /* OPTIONAL error counter step */
            if (source identifier is from an RTCP SDES chunk
                containing a CNAME item that differs from the CNAME
                in the table entry) {
                count a third-party collision;
            } else {
                count a third-party loop;
            }
            abort processing of data packet or control element;
            /* MAY choose a different policy to keep new source */
        }
        /* A collision or loop of the participant's own packets */
        else if (source transport address is found in the list of
                 conflicting data or control source transport
                 addresses) {
            /* OPTIONAL error counter step */
            if (source identifier is not from an RTCP SDES chunk
                containing a CNAME item or CNAME is the
                participant's own) {
                count occurrence of own traffic looped;
            }
            mark current time in conflicting address list entry;
            abort processing of data packet or control element;
        }
        /* New collision, change SSRC identifier */
        else {
            log occurrence of a collision;
            create a new entry in the conflicting data or control
                source transport address list and mark current time;
            send an RTCP BYE packet with the old SSRC identifier;
            choose a new SSRC identifier;
            create a new entry in the source identifier table with
                the old SSRC plus the source transport address from
                the data or control packet being processed;
        }
    }
 In this algorithm, packets from a newly conflicting source address
 will be ignored and packets from the original source address will be
 kept.  If no packets arrive from the original source for an extended
 period, the table entry will be timed out and the new source will be

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 63] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 able to take over.  This might occur if the original source detects
 the collision and moves to a new source identifier, but in the usual
 case an RTCP BYE packet will be received from the original source to
 delete the state without having to wait for a timeout.
 If the original source address was received through a mixer (i.e.,
 learned as a CSRC) and later the same source is received directly,
 the receiver may be well advised to switch to the new source address
 unless other sources in the mix would be lost.  Furthermore, for
 applications such as telephony in which some sources such as mobile
 entities may change addresses during the course of an RTP session,
 the RTP implementation SHOULD modify the collision detection
 algorithm to accept packets from the new source transport address.
 To guard against flip-flopping between addresses if a genuine
 collision does occur, the algorithm SHOULD include some means to
 detect this case and avoid switching.
 When a new SSRC identifier is chosen due to a collision, the
 candidate identifier SHOULD first be looked up in the source
 identifier table to see if it was already in use by some other
 source.  If so, another candidate MUST be generated and the process
 repeated.
 A loop of data packets to a multicast destination can cause severe
 network flooding.  All mixers and translators MUST implement a loop
 detection algorithm like the one here so that they can break loops.
 This should limit the excess traffic to no more than one duplicate
 copy of the original traffic, which may allow the session to continue
 so that the cause of the loop can be found and fixed.  However, in
 extreme cases where a mixer or translator does not properly break the
 loop and high traffic levels result, it may be necessary for end
 systems to cease transmitting data or control packets entirely.  This
 decision may depend upon the application.  An error condition SHOULD
 be indicated as appropriate.  Transmission MAY be attempted again
 periodically after a long, random time (on the order of minutes).

8.3 Use with Layered Encodings

 For layered encodings transmitted on separate RTP sessions (see
 Section 2.4), a single SSRC identifier space SHOULD be used across
 the sessions of all layers and the core (base) layer SHOULD be used
 for SSRC identifier allocation and collision resolution.  When a
 source discovers that it has collided, it transmits an RTCP BYE
 packet on only the base layer but changes the SSRC identifier to the
 new value in all layers.

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 64] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

9. Security

 Lower layer protocols may eventually provide all the security
 services that may be desired for applications of RTP, including
 authentication, integrity, and confidentiality.  These services have
 been specified for IP in [27].  Since the initial audio and video
 applications using RTP needed a confidentiality service before such
 services were available for the IP layer, the confidentiality service
 described in the next section was defined for use with RTP and RTCP.
 That description is included here to codify existing practice.  New
 applications of RTP MAY implement this RTP-specific confidentiality
 service for backward compatibility, and/or they MAY implement
 alternative security services.  The overhead on the RTP protocol for
 this confidentiality service is low, so the penalty will be minimal
 if this service is obsoleted by other services in the future.
 Alternatively, other services, other implementations of services and
 other algorithms may be defined for RTP in the future.  In
 particular, an RTP profile called Secure Real-time Transport Protocol
 (SRTP) [28] is being developed to provide confidentiality of the RTP
 payload while leaving the RTP header in the clear so that link-level
 header compression algorithms can still operate.  It is expected that
 SRTP will be the correct choice for many applications.  SRTP is based
 on the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) and provides stronger
 security than the service described here.  No claim is made that the
 methods presented here are appropriate for a particular security
 need.  A profile may specify which services and algorithms should be
 offered by applications, and may provide guidance as to their
 appropriate use.
 Key distribution and certificates are outside the scope of this
 document.

9.1 Confidentiality

 Confidentiality means that only the intended receiver(s) can decode
 the received packets; for others, the packet contains no useful
 information.  Confidentiality of the content is achieved by
 encryption.
 When it is desired to encrypt RTP or RTCP according to the method
 specified in this section, all the octets that will be encapsulated
 for transmission in a single lower-layer packet are encrypted as a
 unit.  For RTCP, a 32-bit random number redrawn for each unit MUST be
 prepended to the unit before encryption.  For RTP, no prefix is
 prepended; instead, the sequence number and timestamp fields are
 initialized with random offsets.  This is considered to be a weak

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 65] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 initialization vector (IV) because of poor randomness properties.  In
 addition, if the subsequent field, the SSRC, can be manipulated by an
 enemy, there is further weakness of the encryption method.
 For RTCP, an implementation MAY segregate the individual RTCP packets
 in a compound RTCP packet into two separate compound RTCP packets,
 one to be encrypted and one to be sent in the clear.  For example,
 SDES information might be encrypted while reception reports were sent
 in the clear to accommodate third-party monitors that are not privy
 to the encryption key.  In this example, depicted in Fig. 4, the SDES
 information MUST be appended to an RR packet with no reports (and the
 random number) to satisfy the requirement that all compound RTCP
 packets begin with an SR or RR packet.  The SDES CNAME item is
 required in either the encrypted or unencrypted packet, but not both.
 The same SDES information SHOULD NOT be carried in both packets as
 this may compromise the encryption.
           UDP packet                     UDP packet
 -----------------------------  ------------------------------
 [random][RR][SDES #CNAME ...]  [SR #senderinfo #site1 #site2]
 -----------------------------  ------------------------------
           encrypted                     not encrypted
 #: SSRC identifier
     Figure 4: Encrypted and non-encrypted RTCP packets
 The presence of encryption and the use of the correct key are
 confirmed by the receiver through header or payload validity checks.
 Examples of such validity checks for RTP and RTCP headers are given
 in Appendices A.1 and A.2.
 To be consistent with existing implementations of the initial
 specification of RTP in RFC 1889, the default encryption algorithm is
 the Data Encryption Standard (DES) algorithm in cipher block chaining
 (CBC) mode, as described in Section 1.1 of RFC 1423 [29], except that
 padding to a multiple of 8 octets is indicated as described for the P
 bit in Section 5.1.  The initialization vector is zero because random
 values are supplied in the RTP header or by the random prefix for
 compound RTCP packets.  For details on the use of CBC initialization
 vectors, see [30].
 Implementations that support the encryption method specified here
 SHOULD always support the DES algorithm in CBC mode as the default
 cipher for this method to maximize interoperability.  This method was
 chosen because it has been demonstrated to be easy and practical to
 use in experimental audio and video tools in operation on the
 Internet.  However, DES has since been found to be too easily broken.

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 66] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 It is RECOMMENDED that stronger encryption algorithms such as
 Triple-DES be used in place of the default algorithm.  Furthermore,
 secure CBC mode requires that the first block of each packet be XORed
 with a random, independent IV of the same size as the cipher's block
 size.  For RTCP, this is (partially) achieved by prepending each
 packet with a 32-bit random number, independently chosen for each
 packet.  For RTP, the timestamp and sequence number start from random
 values, but consecutive packets will not be independently randomized.
 It should be noted that the randomness in both cases (RTP and RTCP)
 is limited.  High-security applications SHOULD consider other, more
 conventional, protection means.  Other encryption algorithms MAY be
 specified dynamically for a session by non-RTP means.  In particular,
 the SRTP profile [28] based on AES is being developed to take into
 account known plaintext and CBC plaintext manipulation concerns, and
 will be the correct choice in the future.
 As an alternative to encryption at the IP level or at the RTP level
 as described above, profiles MAY define additional payload types for
 encrypted encodings.  Those encodings MUST specify how padding and
 other aspects of the encryption are to be handled.  This method
 allows encrypting only the data while leaving the headers in the
 clear for applications where that is desired.  It may be particularly
 useful for hardware devices that will handle both decryption and
 decoding.  It is also valuable for applications where link-level
 compression of RTP and lower-layer headers is desired and
 confidentiality of the payload (but not addresses) is sufficient
 since encryption of the headers precludes compression.

9.2 Authentication and Message Integrity

 Authentication and message integrity services are not defined at the
 RTP level since these services would not be directly feasible without
 a key management infrastructure.  It is expected that authentication
 and integrity services will be provided by lower layer protocols.

10. Congestion Control

 All transport protocols used on the Internet need to address
 congestion control in some way [31].  RTP is not an exception, but
 because the data transported over RTP is often inelastic (generated
 at a fixed or controlled rate), the means to control congestion in
 RTP may be quite different from those for other transport protocols
 such as TCP.  In one sense, inelasticity reduces the risk of
 congestion because the RTP stream will not expand to consume all
 available bandwidth as a TCP stream can.  However, inelasticity also
 means that the RTP stream cannot arbitrarily reduce its load on the
 network to eliminate congestion when it occurs.

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 67] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 Since RTP may be used for a wide variety of applications in many
 different contexts, there is no single congestion control mechanism
 that will work for all.  Therefore, congestion control SHOULD be
 defined in each RTP profile as appropriate.  For some profiles, it
 may be sufficient to include an applicability statement restricting
 the use of that profile to environments where congestion is avoided
 by engineering.  For other profiles, specific methods such as data
 rate adaptation based on RTCP feedback may be required.

11. RTP over Network and Transport Protocols

 This section describes issues specific to carrying RTP packets within
 particular network and transport protocols.  The following rules
 apply unless superseded by protocol-specific definitions outside this
 specification.
 RTP relies on the underlying protocol(s) to provide demultiplexing of
 RTP data and RTCP control streams.  For UDP and similar protocols,
 RTP SHOULD use an even destination port number and the corresponding
 RTCP stream SHOULD use the next higher (odd) destination port number.
 For applications that take a single port number as a parameter and
 derive the RTP and RTCP port pair from that number, if an odd number
 is supplied then the application SHOULD replace that number with the
 next lower (even) number to use as the base of the port pair.  For
 applications in which the RTP and RTCP destination port numbers are
 specified via explicit, separate parameters (using a signaling
 protocol or other means), the application MAY disregard the
 restrictions that the port numbers be even/odd and consecutive
 although the use of an even/odd port pair is still encouraged.  The
 RTP and RTCP port numbers MUST NOT be the same since RTP relies on
 the port numbers to demultiplex the RTP data and RTCP control
 streams.
 In a unicast session, both participants need to identify a port pair
 for receiving RTP and RTCP packets.  Both participants MAY use the
 same port pair.  A participant MUST NOT assume that the source port
 of the incoming RTP or RTCP packet can be used as the destination
 port for outgoing RTP or RTCP packets.  When RTP data packets are
 being sent in both directions, each participant's RTCP SR packets
 MUST be sent to the port that the other participant has specified for
 reception of RTCP.  The RTCP SR packets combine sender information
 for the outgoing data plus reception report information for the
 incoming data.  If a side is not actively sending data (see Section
 6.4), an RTCP RR packet is sent instead.
 It is RECOMMENDED that layered encoding applications (see Section
 2.4) use a set of contiguous port numbers.  The port numbers MUST be
 distinct because of a widespread deficiency in existing operating

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 68] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 systems that prevents use of the same port with multiple multicast
 addresses, and for unicast, there is only one permissible address.
 Thus for layer n, the data port is P + 2n, and the control port is P
 + 2n + 1.  When IP multicast is used, the addresses MUST also be
 distinct because multicast routing and group membership are managed
 on an address granularity.  However, allocation of contiguous IP
 multicast addresses cannot be assumed because some groups may require
 different scopes and may therefore be allocated from different
 address ranges.
 The previous paragraph conflicts with the SDP specification, RFC 2327
 [15], which says that it is illegal for both multiple addresses and
 multiple ports to be specified in the same session description
 because the association of addresses with ports could be ambiguous.
 It is intended that this restriction will be relaxed in a revision of
 RFC 2327 to allow an equal number of addresses and ports to be
 specified with a one-to-one mapping implied.
 RTP data packets contain no length field or other delineation,
 therefore RTP relies on the underlying protocol(s) to provide a
 length indication.  The maximum length of RTP packets is limited only
 by the underlying protocols.
 If RTP packets are to be carried in an underlying protocol that
 provides the abstraction of a continuous octet stream rather than
 messages (packets), an encapsulation of the RTP packets MUST be
 defined to provide a framing mechanism.  Framing is also needed if
 the underlying protocol may contain padding so that the extent of the
 RTP payload cannot be determined.  The framing mechanism is not
 defined here.
 A profile MAY specify a framing method to be used even when RTP is
 carried in protocols that do provide framing in order to allow
 carrying several RTP packets in one lower-layer protocol data unit,
 such as a UDP packet.  Carrying several RTP packets in one network or
 transport packet reduces header overhead and may simplify
 synchronization between different streams.

12. Summary of Protocol Constants

 This section contains a summary listing of the constants defined in
 this specification.
 The RTP payload type (PT) constants are defined in profiles rather
 than this document.  However, the octet of the RTP header which
 contains the marker bit(s) and payload type MUST avoid the reserved
 values 200 and 201 (decimal) to distinguish RTP packets from the RTCP
 SR and RR packet types for the header validation procedure described

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 69] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 in Appendix A.1.  For the standard definition of one marker bit and a
 7-bit payload type field as shown in this specification, this
 restriction means that payload types 72 and 73 are reserved.

12.1 RTCP Packet Types

 abbrev.  name                 value
 SR       sender report          200
 RR       receiver report        201
 SDES     source description     202
 BYE      goodbye                203
 APP      application-defined    204
 These type values were chosen in the range 200-204 for improved
 header validity checking of RTCP packets compared to RTP packets or
 other unrelated packets.  When the RTCP packet type field is compared
 to the corresponding octet of the RTP header, this range corresponds
 to the marker bit being 1 (which it usually is not in data packets)
 and to the high bit of the standard payload type field being 1 (since
 the static payload types are typically defined in the low half).
 This range was also chosen to be some distance numerically from 0 and
 255 since all-zeros and all-ones are common data patterns.
 Since all compound RTCP packets MUST begin with SR or RR, these codes
 were chosen as an even/odd pair to allow the RTCP validity check to
 test the maximum number of bits with mask and value.
 Additional RTCP packet types may be registered through IANA (see
 Section 15).

12.2 SDES Types

 abbrev.  name                            value
 END      end of SDES list                    0
 CNAME    canonical name                      1
 NAME     user name                           2
 EMAIL    user's electronic mail address      3
 PHONE    user's phone number                 4
 LOC      geographic user location            5
 TOOL     name of application or tool         6
 NOTE     notice about the source             7
 PRIV     private extensions                  8
 Additional SDES types may be registered through IANA (see Section
 15).

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 70] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

13. RTP Profiles and Payload Format Specifications

 A complete specification of RTP for a particular application will
 require one or more companion documents of two types described here:
 profiles, and payload format specifications.
 RTP may be used for a variety of applications with somewhat differing
 requirements.  The flexibility to adapt to those requirements is
 provided by allowing multiple choices in the main protocol
 specification, then selecting the appropriate choices or defining
 extensions for a particular environment and class of applications in
 a separate profile document.  Typically an application will operate
 under only one profile in a particular RTP session, so there is no
 explicit indication within the RTP protocol itself as to which
 profile is in use.  A profile for audio and video applications may be
 found in the companion RFC 3551.  Profiles are typically titled "RTP
 Profile for ...".
 The second type of companion document is a payload format
 specification, which defines how a particular kind of payload data,
 such as H.261 encoded video, should be carried in RTP.  These
 documents are typically titled "RTP Payload Format for XYZ
 Audio/Video Encoding".  Payload formats may be useful under multiple
 profiles and may therefore be defined independently of any particular
 profile.  The profile documents are then responsible for assigning a
 default mapping of that format to a payload type value if needed.
 Within this specification, the following items have been identified
 for possible definition within a profile, but this list is not meant
 to be exhaustive:
 RTP data header: The octet in the RTP data header that contains
    the marker bit and payload type field MAY be redefined by a
    profile to suit different requirements, for example with more or
    fewer marker bits (Section 5.3, p. 18).
 Payload types: Assuming that a payload type field is included,
    the profile will usually define a set of payload formats (e.g.,
    media encodings) and a default static mapping of those formats to
    payload type values.  Some of the payload formats may be defined
    by reference to separate payload format specifications.  For each
    payload type defined, the profile MUST specify the RTP timestamp
    clock rate to be used (Section 5.1, p. 14).
 RTP data header additions: Additional fields MAY be appended to
    the fixed RTP data header if some additional functionality is
    required across the profile's class of applications independent of
    payload type (Section 5.3, p. 18).

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 71] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 RTP data header extensions: The contents of the first 16 bits of
    the RTP data header extension structure MUST be defined if use of
    that mechanism is to be allowed under the profile for
    implementation-specific extensions (Section 5.3.1, p. 18).
 RTCP packet types: New application-class-specific RTCP packet
    types MAY be defined and registered with IANA.
 RTCP report interval: A profile SHOULD specify that the values
    suggested in Section 6.2 for the constants employed in the
    calculation of the RTCP report interval will be used.  Those are
    the RTCP fraction of session bandwidth, the minimum report
    interval, and the bandwidth split between senders and receivers.
    A profile MAY specify alternate values if they have been
    demonstrated to work in a scalable manner.
 SR/RR extension: An extension section MAY be defined for the
    RTCP SR and RR packets if there is additional information that
    should be reported regularly about the sender or receivers
    (Section 6.4.3, p. 42 and 43).
 SDES use: The profile MAY specify the relative priorities for
    RTCP SDES items to be transmitted or excluded entirely (Section
    6.3.9); an alternate syntax or semantics for the CNAME item
    (Section 6.5.1); the format of the LOC item (Section 6.5.5); the
    semantics and use of the NOTE item (Section 6.5.7); or new SDES
    item types to be registered with IANA.
 Security: A profile MAY specify which security services and
    algorithms should be offered by applications, and MAY provide
    guidance as to their appropriate use (Section 9, p. 65).
 String-to-key mapping: A profile MAY specify how a user-provided
    password or pass phrase is mapped into an encryption key.
 Congestion: A profile SHOULD specify the congestion control
    behavior appropriate for that profile.
 Underlying protocol: Use of a particular underlying network or
    transport layer protocol to carry RTP packets MAY be required.
 Transport mapping: A mapping of RTP and RTCP to transport-level
    addresses, e.g., UDP ports, other than the standard mapping
    defined in Section 11, p. 68 may be specified.

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 72] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 Encapsulation: An encapsulation of RTP packets may be defined to
    allow multiple RTP data packets to be carried in one lower-layer
    packet or to provide framing over underlying protocols that do not
    already do so (Section 11, p. 69).
 It is not expected that a new profile will be required for every
 application.  Within one application class, it would be better to
 extend an existing profile rather than make a new one in order to
 facilitate interoperation among the applications since each will
 typically run under only one profile.  Simple extensions such as the
 definition of additional payload type values or RTCP packet types may
 be accomplished by registering them through IANA and publishing their
 descriptions in an addendum to the profile or in a payload format
 specification.

14. Security Considerations

 RTP suffers from the same security liabilities as the underlying
 protocols.  For example, an impostor can fake source or destination
 network addresses, or change the header or payload.  Within RTCP, the
 CNAME and NAME information may be used to impersonate another
 participant.  In addition, RTP may be sent via IP multicast, which
 provides no direct means for a sender to know all the receivers of
 the data sent and therefore no measure of privacy.  Rightly or not,
 users may be more sensitive to privacy concerns with audio and video
 communication than they have been with more traditional forms of
 network communication [33].  Therefore, the use of security
 mechanisms with RTP is important.  These mechanisms are discussed in
 Section 9.
 RTP-level translators or mixers may be used to allow RTP traffic to
 reach hosts behind firewalls.  Appropriate firewall security
 principles and practices, which are beyond the scope of this
 document, should be followed in the design and installation of these
 devices and in the admission of RTP applications for use behind the
 firewall.

15. IANA Considerations

 Additional RTCP packet types and SDES item types may be registered
 through the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA).  Since these
 number spaces are small, allowing unconstrained registration of new
 values would not be prudent.  To facilitate review of requests and to
 promote shared use of new types among multiple applications, requests
 for registration of new values must be documented in an RFC or other
 permanent and readily available reference such as the product of
 another cooperative standards body (e.g., ITU-T).  Other requests may
 also be accepted, under the advice of a "designated expert."

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 73] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 (Contact the IANA for the contact information of the current expert.)
 RTP profile specifications SHOULD register with IANA a name for the
 profile in the form "RTP/xxx", where xxx is a short abbreviation of
 the profile title.  These names are for use by higher-level control
 protocols, such as the Session Description Protocol (SDP), RFC 2327
 [15], to refer to transport methods.

16. Intellectual Property Rights Statement

 The IETF takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any
 intellectual property or other rights that might be claimed to
 pertain to the implementation or use of the technology described in
 this document or the extent to which any license under such rights
 might or might not be available; neither does it represent that it
 has made any effort to identify any such rights.  Information on the
 IETF's procedures with respect to rights in standards-track and
 standards-related documentation can be found in BCP-11.  Copies of
 claims of rights made available for publication and any assurances of
 licenses to be made available, or the result of an attempt made to
 obtain a general license or permission for the use of such
 proprietary rights by implementors or users of this specification can
 be obtained from the IETF Secretariat.
 The IETF invites any interested party to bring to its attention any
 copyrights, patents or patent applications, or other proprietary
 rights which may cover technology that may be required to practice
 this standard.  Please address the information to the IETF Executive
 Director.

17. Acknowledgments

 This memorandum is based on discussions within the IETF Audio/Video
 Transport working group chaired by Stephen Casner and Colin Perkins.
 The current protocol has its origins in the Network Voice Protocol
 and the Packet Video Protocol (Danny Cohen and Randy Cole) and the
 protocol implemented by the vat application (Van Jacobson and Steve
 McCanne).  Christian Huitema provided ideas for the random identifier
 generator.  Extensive analysis and simulation of the timer
 reconsideration algorithm was done by Jonathan Rosenberg.  The
 additions for layered encodings were specified by Michael Speer and
 Steve McCanne.

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 74] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

Appendix A - Algorithms

 We provide examples of C code for aspects of RTP sender and receiver
 algorithms.  There may be other implementation methods that are
 faster in particular operating environments or have other advantages.
 These implementation notes are for informational purposes only and
 are meant to clarify the RTP specification.
 The following definitions are used for all examples; for clarity and
 brevity, the structure definitions are only valid for 32-bit big-
 endian (most significant octet first) architectures.  Bit fields are
 assumed to be packed tightly in big-endian bit order, with no
 additional padding.  Modifications would be required to construct a
 portable implementation.
 /*
  * rtp.h  --  RTP header file
  */
 #include <sys/types.h>
 /*
  * The type definitions below are valid for 32-bit architectures and
  * may have to be adjusted for 16- or 64-bit architectures.
  */
 typedef unsigned char  u_int8;
 typedef unsigned short u_int16;
 typedef unsigned int   u_int32;
 typedef          short int16;
 /*
  * Current protocol version.
  */
 #define RTP_VERSION    2
 #define RTP_SEQ_MOD (1<<16)
 #define RTP_MAX_SDES 255      /* maximum text length for SDES */
 typedef enum {
     RTCP_SR   = 200,
     RTCP_RR   = 201,
     RTCP_SDES = 202,
     RTCP_BYE  = 203,
     RTCP_APP  = 204
 } rtcp_type_t;
 typedef enum {
     RTCP_SDES_END   = 0,
     RTCP_SDES_CNAME = 1,

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 75] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

     RTCP_SDES_NAME  = 2,
     RTCP_SDES_EMAIL = 3,
     RTCP_SDES_PHONE = 4,
     RTCP_SDES_LOC   = 5,
     RTCP_SDES_TOOL  = 6,
     RTCP_SDES_NOTE  = 7,
     RTCP_SDES_PRIV  = 8
 } rtcp_sdes_type_t;
 /*
  * RTP data header
  */
 typedef struct {
     unsigned int version:2;   /* protocol version */
     unsigned int p:1;         /* padding flag */
     unsigned int x:1;         /* header extension flag */
     unsigned int cc:4;        /* CSRC count */
     unsigned int m:1;         /* marker bit */
     unsigned int pt:7;        /* payload type */
     unsigned int seq:16;      /* sequence number */
     u_int32 ts;               /* timestamp */
     u_int32 ssrc;             /* synchronization source */
     u_int32 csrc[1];          /* optional CSRC list */
 } rtp_hdr_t;
 /*
  * RTCP common header word
  */
 typedef struct {
     unsigned int version:2;   /* protocol version */
     unsigned int p:1;         /* padding flag */
     unsigned int count:5;     /* varies by packet type */
     unsigned int pt:8;        /* RTCP packet type */
     u_int16 length;           /* pkt len in words, w/o this word */
 } rtcp_common_t;
 /*
  * Big-endian mask for version, padding bit and packet type pair
  */
 #define RTCP_VALID_MASK (0xc000 | 0x2000 | 0xfe)
 #define RTCP_VALID_VALUE ((RTP_VERSION << 14) | RTCP_SR)
 /*
  * Reception report block
  */
 typedef struct {
     u_int32 ssrc;             /* data source being reported */
     unsigned int fraction:8;  /* fraction lost since last SR/RR */

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 76] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

     int lost:24;              /* cumul. no. pkts lost (signed!) */
     u_int32 last_seq;         /* extended last seq. no. received */
     u_int32 jitter;           /* interarrival jitter */
     u_int32 lsr;              /* last SR packet from this source */
     u_int32 dlsr;             /* delay since last SR packet */
 } rtcp_rr_t;
 /*
  * SDES item
  */
 typedef struct {
     u_int8 type;              /* type of item (rtcp_sdes_type_t) */
     u_int8 length;            /* length of item (in octets) */
     char data[1];             /* text, not null-terminated */
 } rtcp_sdes_item_t;
 /*
  * One RTCP packet
  */
 typedef struct {
     rtcp_common_t common;     /* common header */
     union {
         /* sender report (SR) */
         struct {
             u_int32 ssrc;     /* sender generating this report */
             u_int32 ntp_sec;  /* NTP timestamp */
             u_int32 ntp_frac;
             u_int32 rtp_ts;   /* RTP timestamp */
             u_int32 psent;    /* packets sent */
             u_int32 osent;    /* octets sent */
             rtcp_rr_t rr[1];  /* variable-length list */
         } sr;
         /* reception report (RR) */
         struct {
             u_int32 ssrc;     /* receiver generating this report */
             rtcp_rr_t rr[1];  /* variable-length list */
         } rr;
         /* source description (SDES) */
         struct rtcp_sdes {
             u_int32 src;      /* first SSRC/CSRC */
             rtcp_sdes_item_t item[1]; /* list of SDES items */
         } sdes;
         /* BYE */
         struct {
             u_int32 src[1];   /* list of sources */

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 77] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

             /* can't express trailing text for reason */
         } bye;
     } r;
 } rtcp_t;
 typedef struct rtcp_sdes rtcp_sdes_t;
 /*
  * Per-source state information
  */
 typedef struct {
     u_int16 max_seq;        /* highest seq. number seen */
     u_int32 cycles;         /* shifted count of seq. number cycles */
     u_int32 base_seq;       /* base seq number */
     u_int32 bad_seq;        /* last 'bad' seq number + 1 */
     u_int32 probation;      /* sequ. packets till source is valid */
     u_int32 received;       /* packets received */
     u_int32 expected_prior; /* packet expected at last interval */
     u_int32 received_prior; /* packet received at last interval */
     u_int32 transit;        /* relative trans time for prev pkt */
     u_int32 jitter;         /* estimated jitter */
     /* ... */
 } source;

A.1 RTP Data Header Validity Checks

 An RTP receiver should check the validity of the RTP header on
 incoming packets since they might be encrypted or might be from a
 different application that happens to be misaddressed.  Similarly, if
 encryption according to the method described in Section 9 is enabled,
 the header validity check is needed to verify that incoming packets
 have been correctly decrypted, although a failure of the header
 validity check (e.g., unknown payload type) may not necessarily
 indicate decryption failure.
 Only weak validity checks are possible on an RTP data packet from a
 source that has not been heard before:
 o  RTP version field must equal 2.
 o  The payload type must be known, and in particular it must not be
    equal to SR or RR.
 o  If the P bit is set, then the last octet of the packet must
    contain a valid octet count, in particular, less than the total
    packet length minus the header size.

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 78] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 o  The X bit must be zero if the profile does not specify that the
    header extension mechanism may be used.  Otherwise, the extension
    length field must be less than the total packet size minus the
    fixed header length and padding.
 o  The length of the packet must be consistent with CC and payload
    type (if payloads have a known length).
 The last three checks are somewhat complex and not always possible,
 leaving only the first two which total just a few bits.  If the SSRC
 identifier in the packet is one that has been received before, then
 the packet is probably valid and checking if the sequence number is
 in the expected range provides further validation.  If the SSRC
 identifier has not been seen before, then data packets carrying that
 identifier may be considered invalid until a small number of them
 arrive with consecutive sequence numbers.  Those invalid packets MAY
 be discarded or they MAY be stored and delivered once validation has
 been achieved if the resulting delay is acceptable.
 The routine update_seq shown below ensures that a source is declared
 valid only after MIN_SEQUENTIAL packets have been received in
 sequence.  It also validates the sequence number seq of a newly
 received packet and updates the sequence state for the packet's
 source in the structure to which s points.
 When a new source is heard for the first time, that is, its SSRC
 identifier is not in the table (see Section 8.2), and the per-source
 state is allocated for it, s->probation is set to the number of
 sequential packets required before declaring a source valid
 (parameter MIN_SEQUENTIAL) and other variables are initialized:
    init_seq(s, seq);
    s->max_seq = seq - 1;
    s->probation = MIN_SEQUENTIAL;
 A non-zero s->probation marks the source as not yet valid so the
 state may be discarded after a short timeout rather than a long one,
 as discussed in Section 6.2.1.
 After a source is considered valid, the sequence number is considered
 valid if it is no more than MAX_DROPOUT ahead of s->max_seq nor more
 than MAX_MISORDER behind.  If the new sequence number is ahead of
 max_seq modulo the RTP sequence number range (16 bits), but is
 smaller than max_seq, it has wrapped around and the (shifted) count
 of sequence number cycles is incremented.  A value of one is returned
 to indicate a valid sequence number.

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 79] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 Otherwise, the value zero is returned to indicate that the validation
 failed, and the bad sequence number plus 1 is stored.  If the next
 packet received carries the next higher sequence number, it is
 considered the valid start of a new packet sequence presumably caused
 by an extended dropout or a source restart.  Since multiple complete
 sequence number cycles may have been missed, the packet loss
 statistics are reset.
 Typical values for the parameters are shown, based on a maximum
 misordering time of 2 seconds at 50 packets/second and a maximum
 dropout of 1 minute.  The dropout parameter MAX_DROPOUT should be a
 small fraction of the 16-bit sequence number space to give a
 reasonable probability that new sequence numbers after a restart will
 not fall in the acceptable range for sequence numbers from before the
 restart.
 void init_seq(source *s, u_int16 seq)
 {
     s->base_seq = seq;
     s->max_seq = seq;
     s->bad_seq = RTP_SEQ_MOD + 1;   /* so seq == bad_seq is false */
     s->cycles = 0;
     s->received = 0;
     s->received_prior = 0;
     s->expected_prior = 0;
     /* other initialization */
 }
 int update_seq(source *s, u_int16 seq)
 {
     u_int16 udelta = seq - s->max_seq;
     const int MAX_DROPOUT = 3000;
     const int MAX_MISORDER = 100;
     const int MIN_SEQUENTIAL = 2;
     /*
      * Source is not valid until MIN_SEQUENTIAL packets with
      * sequential sequence numbers have been received.
      */
     if (s->probation) {
         /* packet is in sequence */
         if (seq == s->max_seq + 1) {
             s->probation--;
             s->max_seq = seq;
             if (s->probation == 0) {
                 init_seq(s, seq);
                 s->received++;
                 return 1;

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 80] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

             }
         } else {
             s->probation = MIN_SEQUENTIAL - 1;
             s->max_seq = seq;
         }
         return 0;
     } else if (udelta < MAX_DROPOUT) {
         /* in order, with permissible gap */
         if (seq < s->max_seq) {
             /*
              * Sequence number wrapped - count another 64K cycle.
              */
             s->cycles += RTP_SEQ_MOD;
         }
         s->max_seq = seq;
     } else if (udelta <= RTP_SEQ_MOD - MAX_MISORDER) {
         /* the sequence number made a very large jump */
         if (seq == s->bad_seq) {
             /*
              * Two sequential packets -- assume that the other side
              * restarted without telling us so just re-sync
              * (i.e., pretend this was the first packet).
              */
             init_seq(s, seq);
         }
         else {
             s->bad_seq = (seq + 1) & (RTP_SEQ_MOD-1);
             return 0;
         }
     } else {
         /* duplicate or reordered packet */
     }
     s->received++;
     return 1;
 }
 The validity check can be made stronger requiring more than two
 packets in sequence.  The disadvantages are that a larger number of
 initial packets will be discarded (or delayed in a queue) and that
 high packet loss rates could prevent validation.  However, because
 the RTCP header validation is relatively strong, if an RTCP packet is
 received from a source before the data packets, the count could be
 adjusted so that only two packets are required in sequence.  If
 initial data loss for a few seconds can be tolerated, an application
 MAY choose to discard all data packets from a source until a valid
 RTCP packet has been received from that source.

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 81] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 Depending on the application and encoding, algorithms may exploit
 additional knowledge about the payload format for further validation.
 For payload types where the timestamp increment is the same for all
 packets, the timestamp values can be predicted from the previous
 packet received from the same source using the sequence number
 difference (assuming no change in payload type).
 A strong "fast-path" check is possible since with high probability
 the first four octets in the header of a newly received RTP data
 packet will be just the same as that of the previous packet from the
 same SSRC except that the sequence number will have increased by one.
 Similarly, a single-entry cache may be used for faster SSRC lookups
 in applications where data is typically received from one source at a
 time.

A.2 RTCP Header Validity Checks

 The following checks should be applied to RTCP packets.
 o  RTP version field must equal 2.
 o  The payload type field of the first RTCP packet in a compound
    packet must be equal to SR or RR.
 o  The padding bit (P) should be zero for the first packet of a
    compound RTCP packet because padding should only be applied, if it
    is needed, to the last packet.
 o  The length fields of the individual RTCP packets must add up to
    the overall length of the compound RTCP packet as received.  This
    is a fairly strong check.
 The code fragment below performs all of these checks.  The packet
 type is not checked for subsequent packets since unknown packet types
 may be present and should be ignored.
    u_int32 len;        /* length of compound RTCP packet in words */
    rtcp_t *r;          /* RTCP header */
    rtcp_t *end;        /* end of compound RTCP packet */
    if ((*(u_int16 *)r & RTCP_VALID_MASK) != RTCP_VALID_VALUE) {
        /* something wrong with packet format */
    }
    end = (rtcp_t *)((u_int32 *)r + len);
    do r = (rtcp_t *)((u_int32 *)r + r->common.length + 1);
    while (r < end && r->common.version == 2);

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 82] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

    if (r != end) {
        /* something wrong with packet format */
    }

A.3 Determining Number of Packets Expected and Lost

 In order to compute packet loss rates, the number of RTP packets
 expected and actually received from each source needs to be known,
 using per-source state information defined in struct source
 referenced via pointer s in the code below.  The number of packets
 received is simply the count of packets as they arrive, including any
 late or duplicate packets.  The number of packets expected can be
 computed by the receiver as the difference between the highest
 sequence number received (s->max_seq) and the first sequence number
 received (s->base_seq).  Since the sequence number is only 16 bits
 and will wrap around, it is necessary to extend the highest sequence
 number with the (shifted) count of sequence number wraparounds
 (s->cycles).  Both the received packet count and the count of cycles
 are maintained the RTP header validity check routine in Appendix A.1.
    extended_max = s->cycles + s->max_seq;
    expected = extended_max - s->base_seq + 1;
 The number of packets lost is defined to be the number of packets
 expected less the number of packets actually received:
    lost = expected - s->received;
 Since this signed number is carried in 24 bits, it should be clamped
 at 0x7fffff for positive loss or 0x800000 for negative loss rather
 than wrapping around.
 The fraction of packets lost during the last reporting interval
 (since the previous SR or RR packet was sent) is calculated from
 differences in the expected and received packet counts across the
 interval, where expected_prior and received_prior are the values
 saved when the previous reception report was generated:
    expected_interval = expected - s->expected_prior;
    s->expected_prior = expected;
    received_interval = s->received - s->received_prior;
    s->received_prior = s->received;
    lost_interval = expected_interval - received_interval;
    if (expected_interval == 0 || lost_interval <= 0) fraction = 0;
    else fraction = (lost_interval << 8) / expected_interval;
 The resulting fraction is an 8-bit fixed point number with the binary
 point at the left edge.

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 83] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

A.4 Generating RTCP SDES Packets

 This function builds one SDES chunk into buffer b composed of argc
 items supplied in arrays type, value and length.  It returns a
 pointer to the next available location within b.
 char *rtp_write_sdes(char *b, u_int32 src, int argc,
                      rtcp_sdes_type_t type[], char *value[],
                      int length[])
 {
     rtcp_sdes_t *s = (rtcp_sdes_t *)b;
     rtcp_sdes_item_t *rsp;
     int i;
     int len;
     int pad;
     /* SSRC header */
     s->src = src;
     rsp = &s->item[0];
     /* SDES items */
     for (i = 0; i < argc; i++) {
         rsp->type = type[i];
         len = length[i];
         if (len > RTP_MAX_SDES) {
             /* invalid length, may want to take other action */
             len = RTP_MAX_SDES;
         }
         rsp->length = len;
         memcpy(rsp->data, value[i], len);
         rsp = (rtcp_sdes_item_t *)&rsp->data[len];
     }
     /* terminate with end marker and pad to next 4-octet boundary */
     len = ((char *) rsp) - b;
     pad = 4 - (len & 0x3);
     b = (char *) rsp;
     while (pad--) *b++ = RTCP_SDES_END;
     return b;
 }

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 84] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

A.5 Parsing RTCP SDES Packets

 This function parses an SDES packet, calling functions find_member()
 to find a pointer to the information for a session member given the
 SSRC identifier and member_sdes() to store the new SDES information
 for that member.  This function expects a pointer to the header of
 the RTCP packet.
 void rtp_read_sdes(rtcp_t *r)
 {
     int count = r->common.count;
     rtcp_sdes_t *sd = &r->r.sdes;
     rtcp_sdes_item_t *rsp, *rspn;
     rtcp_sdes_item_t *end = (rtcp_sdes_item_t *)
                             ((u_int32 *)r + r->common.length + 1);
     source *s;
     while (--count >= 0) {
         rsp = &sd->item[0];
         if (rsp >= end) break;
         s = find_member(sd->src);
         for (; rsp->type; rsp = rspn ) {
             rspn = (rtcp_sdes_item_t *)((char*)rsp+rsp->length+2);
             if (rspn >= end) {
                 rsp = rspn;
                 break;
             }
             member_sdes(s, rsp->type, rsp->data, rsp->length);
         }
         sd = (rtcp_sdes_t *)
              ((u_int32 *)sd + (((char *)rsp - (char *)sd) >> 2)+1);
     }
     if (count >= 0) {
         /* invalid packet format */
     }
 }

A.6 Generating a Random 32-bit Identifier

 The following subroutine generates a random 32-bit identifier using
 the MD5 routines published in RFC 1321 [32].  The system routines may
 not be present on all operating systems, but they should serve as
 hints as to what kinds of information may be used.  Other system
 calls that may be appropriate include

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 85] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 o  getdomainname(),
 o  getwd(), or
 o  getrusage().
 "Live" video or audio samples are also a good source of random
 numbers, but care must be taken to avoid using a turned-off
 microphone or blinded camera as a source [17].
 Use of this or a similar routine is recommended to generate the
 initial seed for the random number generator producing the RTCP
 period (as shown in Appendix A.7), to generate the initial values for
 the sequence number and timestamp, and to generate SSRC values.
 Since this routine is likely to be CPU-intensive, its direct use to
 generate RTCP periods is inappropriate because predictability is not
 an issue.  Note that this routine produces the same result on
 repeated calls until the value of the system clock changes unless
 different values are supplied for the type argument.
 /*
  * Generate a random 32-bit quantity.
  */
 #include <sys/types.h>   /* u_long */
 #include <sys/time.h>    /* gettimeofday() */
 #include <unistd.h>      /* get..() */
 #include <stdio.h>       /* printf() */
 #include <time.h>        /* clock() */
 #include <sys/utsname.h> /* uname() */
 #include "global.h"      /* from RFC 1321 */
 #include "md5.h"         /* from RFC 1321 */
 #define MD_CTX MD5_CTX
 #define MDInit MD5Init
 #define MDUpdate MD5Update
 #define MDFinal MD5Final
 static u_long md_32(char *string, int length)
 {
     MD_CTX context;
     union {
         char   c[16];
         u_long x[4];
     } digest;
     u_long r;
     int i;
     MDInit (&context);

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 86] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

     MDUpdate (&context, string, length);
     MDFinal ((unsigned char *)&digest, &context);
     r = 0;
     for (i = 0; i < 3; i++) {
         r ^= digest.x[i];
     }
     return r;
 }                               /* md_32 */
 /*
  * Return random unsigned 32-bit quantity.  Use 'type' argument if
  * you need to generate several different values in close succession.
  */
 u_int32 random32(int type)
 {
     struct {
         int     type;
         struct  timeval tv;
         clock_t cpu;
         pid_t   pid;
         u_long  hid;
         uid_t   uid;
         gid_t   gid;
         struct  utsname name;
     } s;
     gettimeofday(&s.tv, 0);
     uname(&s.name);
     s.type = type;
     s.cpu  = clock();
     s.pid  = getpid();
     s.hid  = gethostid();
     s.uid  = getuid();
     s.gid  = getgid();
     /* also: system uptime */
     return md_32((char *)&s, sizeof(s));
 }                               /* random32 */

A.7 Computing the RTCP Transmission Interval

 The following functions implement the RTCP transmission and reception
 rules described in Section 6.2.  These rules are coded in several
 functions:
 o  rtcp_interval() computes the deterministic calculated interval,
    measured in seconds.  The parameters are defined in Section 6.3.

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 87] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 o  OnExpire() is called when the RTCP transmission timer expires.
 o  OnReceive() is called whenever an RTCP packet is received.
 Both OnExpire() and OnReceive() have event e as an argument.  This is
 the next scheduled event for that participant, either an RTCP report
 or a BYE packet.  It is assumed that the following functions are
 available:
 o  Schedule(time t, event e) schedules an event e to occur at time t.
    When time t arrives, the function OnExpire is called with e as an
    argument.
 o  Reschedule(time t, event e) reschedules a previously scheduled
    event e for time t.
 o  SendRTCPReport(event e) sends an RTCP report.
 o  SendBYEPacket(event e) sends a BYE packet.
 o  TypeOfEvent(event e) returns EVENT_BYE if the event being
    processed is for a BYE packet to be sent, else it returns
    EVENT_REPORT.
 o  PacketType(p) returns PACKET_RTCP_REPORT if packet p is an RTCP
    report (not BYE), PACKET_BYE if its a BYE RTCP packet, and
    PACKET_RTP if its a regular RTP data packet.
 o  ReceivedPacketSize() and SentPacketSize() return the size of the
    referenced packet in octets.
 o  NewMember(p) returns a 1 if the participant who sent packet p is
    not currently in the member list, 0 otherwise.  Note this function
    is not sufficient for a complete implementation because each CSRC
    identifier in an RTP packet and each SSRC in a BYE packet should
    be processed.
 o  NewSender(p) returns a 1 if the participant who sent packet p is
    not currently in the sender sublist of the member list, 0
    otherwise.
 o  AddMember() and RemoveMember() to add and remove participants from
    the member list.
 o  AddSender() and RemoveSender() to add and remove participants from
    the sender sublist of the member list.

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 88] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 These functions would have to be extended for an implementation that
 allows the RTCP bandwidth fractions for senders and non-senders to be
 specified as explicit parameters rather than fixed values of 25% and
 75%.  The extended implementation of rtcp_interval() would need to
 avoid division by zero if one of the parameters was zero.
 double rtcp_interval(int members,
                      int senders,
                      double rtcp_bw,
                      int we_sent,
                      double avg_rtcp_size,
                      int initial)
 {
     /*
      * Minimum average time between RTCP packets from this site (in
      * seconds).  This time prevents the reports from `clumping' when
      * sessions are small and the law of large numbers isn't helping
      * to smooth out the traffic.  It also keeps the report interval
      * from becoming ridiculously small during transient outages like
      * a network partition.
      */
     double const RTCP_MIN_TIME = 5.;
     /*
      * Fraction of the RTCP bandwidth to be shared among active
      * senders.  (This fraction was chosen so that in a typical
      * session with one or two active senders, the computed report
      * time would be roughly equal to the minimum report time so that
      * we don't unnecessarily slow down receiver reports.)  The
      * receiver fraction must be 1 - the sender fraction.
      */
     double const RTCP_SENDER_BW_FRACTION = 0.25;
     double const RTCP_RCVR_BW_FRACTION = (1-RTCP_SENDER_BW_FRACTION);
     /*
     /* To compensate for "timer reconsideration" converging to a
      * value below the intended average.
      */
     double const COMPENSATION = 2.71828 - 1.5;
     double t;                   /* interval */
     double rtcp_min_time = RTCP_MIN_TIME;
     int n;                      /* no. of members for computation */
     /*
      * Very first call at application start-up uses half the min
      * delay for quicker notification while still allowing some time
      * before reporting for randomization and to learn about other
      * sources so the report interval will converge to the correct
      * interval more quickly.

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 89] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

  • /

if (initial) {

         rtcp_min_time /= 2;
     }
     /*
      * Dedicate a fraction of the RTCP bandwidth to senders unless
      * the number of senders is large enough that their share is
      * more than that fraction.
      */
     n = members;
     if (senders <= members * RTCP_SENDER_BW_FRACTION) {
         if (we_sent) {
             rtcp_bw *= RTCP_SENDER_BW_FRACTION;
             n = senders;
         } else {
             rtcp_bw *= RTCP_RCVR_BW_FRACTION;
             n -= senders;
         }
     }
     /*
      * The effective number of sites times the average packet size is
      * the total number of octets sent when each site sends a report.
      * Dividing this by the effective bandwidth gives the time
      * interval over which those packets must be sent in order to
      * meet the bandwidth target, with a minimum enforced.  In that
      * time interval we send one report so this time is also our
      * average time between reports.
      */
     t = avg_rtcp_size * n / rtcp_bw;
     if (t < rtcp_min_time) t = rtcp_min_time;
     /*
      * To avoid traffic bursts from unintended synchronization with
      * other sites, we then pick our actual next report interval as a
      * random number uniformly distributed between 0.5*t and 1.5*t.
      */
     t = t * (drand48() + 0.5);
     t = t / COMPENSATION;
     return t;
 }
 void OnExpire(event e,
               int    members,
               int    senders,
               double rtcp_bw,
               int    we_sent,
               double *avg_rtcp_size,

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 90] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

               int    *initial,
               time_tp   tc,
               time_tp   *tp,
               int    *pmembers)
 {
     /* This function is responsible for deciding whether to send an
      * RTCP report or BYE packet now, or to reschedule transmission.
      * It is also responsible for updating the pmembers, initial, tp,
      * and avg_rtcp_size state variables.  This function should be
      * called upon expiration of the event timer used by Schedule().
      */
     double t;     /* Interval */
     double tn;    /* Next transmit time */
     /* In the case of a BYE, we use "timer reconsideration" to
      * reschedule the transmission of the BYE if necessary */
     if (TypeOfEvent(e) == EVENT_BYE) {
         t = rtcp_interval(members,
                           senders,
                           rtcp_bw,
                           we_sent,
                           *avg_rtcp_size,
                           *initial);
         tn = *tp + t;
         if (tn <= tc) {
             SendBYEPacket(e);
             exit(1);
         } else {
             Schedule(tn, e);
         }
     } else if (TypeOfEvent(e) == EVENT_REPORT) {
         t = rtcp_interval(members,
                           senders,
                           rtcp_bw,
                           we_sent,
                           *avg_rtcp_size,
                           *initial);
         tn = *tp + t;
         if (tn <= tc) {
             SendRTCPReport(e);
             *avg_rtcp_size = (1./16.)*SentPacketSize(e) +
                 (15./16.)*(*avg_rtcp_size);
             *tp = tc;
             /* We must redraw the interval.  Don't reuse the

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 91] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

                one computed above, since its not actually
                distributed the same, as we are conditioned
                on it being small enough to cause a packet to
                be sent */
             t = rtcp_interval(members,
                               senders,
                               rtcp_bw,
                               we_sent,
                               *avg_rtcp_size,
                               *initial);
             Schedule(t+tc,e);
             *initial = 0;
         } else {
             Schedule(tn, e);
         }
         *pmembers = members;
     }
 }
 void OnReceive(packet p,
                event e,
                int *members,
                int *pmembers,
                int *senders,
                double *avg_rtcp_size,
                double *tp,
                double tc,
                double tn)
 {
     /* What we do depends on whether we have left the group, and are
      * waiting to send a BYE (TypeOfEvent(e) == EVENT_BYE) or an RTCP
      * report.  p represents the packet that was just received.  */
     if (PacketType(p) == PACKET_RTCP_REPORT) {
         if (NewMember(p) && (TypeOfEvent(e) == EVENT_REPORT)) {
             AddMember(p);
             *members += 1;
         }
         *avg_rtcp_size = (1./16.)*ReceivedPacketSize(p) +
             (15./16.)*(*avg_rtcp_size);
     } else if (PacketType(p) == PACKET_RTP) {
         if (NewMember(p) && (TypeOfEvent(e) == EVENT_REPORT)) {
             AddMember(p);
             *members += 1;
         }
         if (NewSender(p) && (TypeOfEvent(e) == EVENT_REPORT)) {

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 92] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

             AddSender(p);
             *senders += 1;
         }
     } else if (PacketType(p) == PACKET_BYE) {
         *avg_rtcp_size = (1./16.)*ReceivedPacketSize(p) +
             (15./16.)*(*avg_rtcp_size);
         if (TypeOfEvent(e) == EVENT_REPORT) {
             if (NewSender(p) == FALSE) {
                 RemoveSender(p);
                 *senders -= 1;
             }
             if (NewMember(p) == FALSE) {
                 RemoveMember(p);
                 *members -= 1;
             }
             if (*members < *pmembers) {
                 tn = tc +
                     (((double) *members)/(*pmembers))*(tn - tc);
                 *tp = tc -
                     (((double) *members)/(*pmembers))*(tc - *tp);
                 /* Reschedule the next report for time tn */
                 Reschedule(tn, e);
                 *pmembers = *members;
             }
         } else if (TypeOfEvent(e) == EVENT_BYE) {
             *members += 1;
         }
     }
 }

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 93] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

A.8 Estimating the Interarrival Jitter

 The code fragments below implement the algorithm given in Section
 6.4.1 for calculating an estimate of the statistical variance of the
 RTP data interarrival time to be inserted in the interarrival jitter
 field of reception reports.  The inputs are r->ts, the timestamp from
 the incoming packet, and arrival, the current time in the same units.
 Here s points to state for the source; s->transit holds the relative
 transit time for the previous packet, and s->jitter holds the
 estimated jitter.  The jitter field of the reception report is
 measured in timestamp units and expressed as an unsigned integer, but
 the jitter estimate is kept in a floating point.  As each data packet
 arrives, the jitter estimate is updated:
    int transit = arrival - r->ts;
    int d = transit - s->transit;
    s->transit = transit;
    if (d < 0) d = -d;
    s->jitter += (1./16.) * ((double)d - s->jitter);
 When a reception report block (to which rr points) is generated for
 this member, the current jitter estimate is returned:
    rr->jitter = (u_int32) s->jitter;
 Alternatively, the jitter estimate can be kept as an integer, but
 scaled to reduce round-off error.  The calculation is the same except
 for the last line:
    s->jitter += d - ((s->jitter + 8) >> 4);
 In this case, the estimate is sampled for the reception report as:
    rr->jitter = s->jitter >> 4;

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 94] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

Appendix B - Changes from RFC 1889

 Most of this RFC is identical to RFC 1889.  There are no changes in
 the packet formats on the wire, only changes to the rules and
 algorithms governing how the protocol is used.  The biggest change is
 an enhancement to the scalable timer algorithm for calculating when
 to send RTCP packets:
 o  The algorithm for calculating the RTCP transmission interval
    specified in Sections 6.2 and 6.3 and illustrated in Appendix A.7
    is augmented to include "reconsideration" to minimize transmission
    in excess of the intended rate when many participants join a
    session simultaneously, and "reverse reconsideration" to reduce
    the incidence and duration of false participant timeouts when the
    number of participants drops rapidly.  Reverse reconsideration is
    also used to possibly shorten the delay before sending RTCP SR
    when transitioning from passive receiver to active sender mode.
 o  Section 6.3.7 specifies new rules controlling when an RTCP BYE
    packet should be sent in order to avoid a flood of packets when
    many participants leave a session simultaneously.
 o  The requirement to retain state for inactive participants for a
    period long enough to span typical network partitions was removed
    from Section 6.2.1.  In a session where many participants join for
    a brief time and fail to send BYE, this requirement would cause a
    significant overestimate of the number of participants.  The
    reconsideration algorithm added in this revision compensates for
    the large number of new participants joining simultaneously when a
    partition heals.
 It should be noted that these enhancements only have a significant
 effect when the number of session participants is large (thousands)
 and most of the participants join or leave at the same time.  This
 makes testing in a live network difficult.  However, the algorithm
 was subjected to a thorough analysis and simulation to verify its
 performance.  Furthermore, the enhanced algorithm was designed to
 interoperate with the algorithm in RFC 1889 such that the degree of
 reduction in excess RTCP bandwidth during a step join is proportional
 to the fraction of participants that implement the enhanced
 algorithm.  Interoperation of the two algorithms has been verified
 experimentally on live networks.
 Other functional changes were:
 o  Section 6.2.1 specifies that implementations may store only a
    sampling of the participants' SSRC identifiers to allow scaling to
    very large sessions.  Algorithms are specified in RFC 2762 [21].

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 95] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 o  In Section 6.2 it is specified that RTCP sender and non-sender
    bandwidths may be set as separate parameters of the session rather
    than a strict percentage of the session bandwidth, and may be set
    to zero.  The requirement that RTCP was mandatory for RTP sessions
    using IP multicast was relaxed.  However, a clarification was also
    added that turning off RTCP is NOT RECOMMENDED.
 o  In Sections 6.2, 6.3.1 and Appendix A.7, it is specified that the
    fraction of participants below which senders get dedicated RTCP
    bandwidth changes from the fixed 1/4 to a ratio based on the RTCP
    sender and non-sender bandwidth parameters when those are given.
    The condition that no bandwidth is dedicated to senders when there
    are no senders was removed since that is expected to be a
    transitory state.  It also keeps non-senders from using sender
    RTCP bandwidth when that is not intended.
 o  Also in Section 6.2 it is specified that the minimum RTCP interval
    may be scaled to smaller values for high bandwidth sessions, and
    that the initial RTCP delay may be set to zero for unicast
    sessions.
 o  Timing out a participant is to be based on inactivity for a number
    of RTCP report intervals calculated using the receiver RTCP
    bandwidth fraction even for active senders.
 o  Sections 7.2 and 7.3 specify that translators and mixers should
    send BYE packets for the sources they are no longer forwarding.
 o  Rule changes for layered encodings are defined in Sections 2.4,
    6.3.9, 8.3 and 11.  In the last of these, it is noted that the
    address and port assignment rule conflicts with the SDP
    specification, RFC 2327 [15], but it is intended that this
    restriction will be relaxed in a revision of RFC 2327.
 o  The convention for using even/odd port pairs for RTP and RTCP in
    Section 11 was clarified to refer to destination ports.  The
    requirement to use an even/odd port pair was removed if the two
    ports are specified explicitly.  For unicast RTP sessions,
    distinct port pairs may be used for the two ends (Sections 3, 7.1
    and 11).
 o  A new Section 10 was added to explain the requirement for
    congestion control in applications using RTP.
 o  In Section 8.2, the requirement that a new SSRC identifier MUST be
    chosen whenever the source transport address is changed has been
    relaxed to say that a new SSRC identifier MAY be chosen.
    Correspondingly, it was clarified that an implementation MAY

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 96] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

    choose to keep packets from the new source address rather than the
    existing source address when an SSRC collision occurs between two
    other participants, and SHOULD do so for applications such as
    telephony in which some sources such as mobile entities may change
    addresses during the course of an RTP session.
 o  An indentation bug in the RFC 1889 printing of the pseudo-code for
    the collision detection and resolution algorithm in Section 8.2
    has been corrected by translating the syntax to pseudo C language,
    and the algorithm has been modified to remove the restriction that
    both RTP and RTCP must be sent from the same source port number.
 o  The description of the padding mechanism for RTCP packets was
    clarified and it is specified that padding MUST only be applied to
    the last packet of a compound RTCP packet.
 o  In Section A.1, initialization of base_seq was corrected to be seq
    rather than seq - 1, and the text was corrected to say the bad
    sequence number plus 1 is stored.  The initialization of max_seq
    and other variables for the algorithm was separated from the text
    to make clear that this initialization must be done in addition to
    calling the init_seq() function (and a few words lost in RFC 1889
    when processing the document from source to output form were
    restored).
 o  Clamping of number of packets lost in Section A.3 was corrected to
    use both positive and negative limits.
 o  The specification of "relative" NTP timestamp in the RTCP SR
    section now defines these timestamps to be based on the most
    common system-specific clock, such as system uptime, rather than
    on session elapsed time which would not be the same for multiple
    applications started on the same machine at different times.
 Non-functional changes:
 o  It is specified that a receiver MUST ignore packets with payload
    types it does not understand.
 o  In Fig. 2, the floating point NTP timestamp value was corrected,
    some missing leading zeros were added in a hex number, and the UTC
    timezone was specified.
 o  The inconsequence of NTP timestamps wrapping around in the year
    2036 is explained.

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 97] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 o  The policy for registration of RTCP packet types and SDES types
    was clarified in a new Section 15, IANA Considerations.  The
    suggestion that experimenters register the numbers they need and
    then unregister those which prove to be unneeded has been removed
    in favor of using APP and PRIV.  Registration of profile names was
    also specified.
 o  The reference for the UTF-8 character set was changed from an
    X/Open Preliminary Specification to be RFC 2279.
 o  The reference for RFC 1597 was updated to RFC 1918 and the
    reference for RFC 2543 was updated to RFC 3261.
 o  The last paragraph of the introduction in RFC 1889, which
    cautioned implementors to limit deployment in the Internet, was
    removed because it was deemed no longer relevant.
 o  A non-normative note regarding the use of RTP with Source-Specific
    Multicast (SSM) was added in Section 6.
 o  The definition of "RTP session" in Section 3 was expanded to
    acknowledge that a single session may use multiple destination
    transport addresses (as was always the case for a translator or
    mixer) and to explain that the distinguishing feature of an RTP
    session is that each corresponds to a separate SSRC identifier
    space.  A new definition of "multimedia session" was added to
    reduce confusion about the word "session".
 o  The meaning of "sampling instant" was explained in more detail as
    part of the definition of the timestamp field of the RTP header in
    Section 5.1.
 o  Small clarifications of the text have been made in several places,
    some in response to questions from readers.  In particular:
  1. In RFC 1889, the first five words of the second sentence of

Section 2.2 were lost in processing the document from source to

       output form, but are now restored.
  1. A definition for "RTP media type" was added in Section 3 to

allow the explanation of multiplexing RTP sessions in Section

       5.2 to be more clear regarding the multiplexing of multiple
       media.  That section also now explains that multiplexing
       multiple sources of the same medium based on SSRC identifiers
       may be appropriate and is the norm for multicast sessions.
  1. The definition for "non-RTP means" was expanded to include

examples of other protocols constituting non-RTP means.

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 98] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

  1. The description of the session bandwidth parameter is expanded

in Section 6.2, including a clarification that the control

       traffic bandwidth is in addition to the session bandwidth for
       the data traffic.
  1. The effect of varying packet duration on the jitter calculation

was explained in Section 6.4.4.

  1. The method for terminating and padding a sequence of SDES items

was clarified in Section 6.5.

  1. IPv6 address examples were added in the description of SDES

CNAME in Section 6.5.1, and "example.com" was used in place of

       other example domain names.
  1. The Security section added a formal reference to IPSEC now that

it is available, and says that the confidentiality method

       defined in this specification is primarily to codify existing
       practice.  It is RECOMMENDED that stronger encryption
       algorithms such as Triple-DES be used in place of the default
       algorithm, and noted that the SRTP profile based on AES will be
       the correct choice in the future.  A caution about the weakness
       of the RTP header as an initialization vector was added.  It
       was also noted that payload-only encryption is necessary to
       allow for header compression.
  1. The method for partial encryption of RTCP was clarified; in

particular, SDES CNAME is carried in only one part when the

       compound RTCP packet is split.
  1. It is clarified that only one compound RTCP packet should be

sent per reporting interval and that if there are too many

       active sources for the reports to fit in the MTU, then a subset
       of the sources should be selected round-robin over multiple
       intervals.
  1. A note was added in Appendix A.1 that packets may be saved

during RTP header validation and delivered upon success.

  1. Section 7.3 now explains that a mixer aggregating SDES packets

uses more RTCP bandwidth due to longer packets, and a mixer

       passing through RTCP naturally sends packets at higher than the
       single source rate, but both behaviors are valid.
  1. Section 13 clarifies that an RTP application may use multiple

profiles but typically only one in a given session.

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 99] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

  1. The terms MUST, SHOULD, MAY, etc. are used as defined in RFC

2119.

  1. The bibliography was divided into normative and informative

references.

References

Normative References

 [1]  Schulzrinne, H. and S. Casner, "RTP Profile for Audio and Video
      Conferences with Minimal Control", RFC 3551, July 2003.
 [2]  Bradner, S., "Key Words for Use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement
      Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
 [3]  Postel, J., "Internet Protocol", STD 5, RFC 791, September 1981.
 [4]  Mills, D., "Network Time Protocol (Version 3) Specification,
      Implementation and Analysis", RFC 1305, March 1992.
 [5]  Yergeau, F., "UTF-8, a Transformation Format of ISO 10646", RFC
      2279, January 1998.
 [6]  Mockapetris, P., "Domain Names - Concepts and Facilities", STD
      13, RFC 1034, November 1987.
 [7]  Mockapetris, P., "Domain Names - Implementation and
      Specification", STD 13, RFC 1035, November 1987.
 [8]  Braden, R., "Requirements for Internet Hosts - Application and
      Support", STD 3, RFC 1123, October 1989.
 [9]  Resnick, P., "Internet Message Format", RFC 2822, April 2001.

Informative References

 [10] Clark, D. and D. Tennenhouse, "Architectural Considerations for
      a New Generation of Protocols," in SIGCOMM Symposium on
      Communications Architectures and Protocols , (Philadelphia,
      Pennsylvania), pp. 200--208, IEEE Computer Communications
      Review, Vol. 20(4), September 1990.
 [11] Schulzrinne, H., "Issues in designing a transport protocol for
      audio and video conferences and other multiparticipant real-time
      applications." expired Internet Draft, October 1993.

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 100] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 [12] Comer, D., Internetworking with TCP/IP , vol. 1.  Englewood
      Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1991.
 [13] Rosenberg, J., Schulzrinne, H., Camarillo, G., Johnston, A.,
      Peterson, J., Sparks, R., Handley, M. and E. Schooler, "SIP:
      Session Initiation Protocol", RFC 3261, June 2002.
 [14] International Telecommunication Union, "Visual telephone systems
      and equipment for local area networks which provide a non-
      guaranteed quality of service", Recommendation H.323,
      Telecommunication Standardization Sector of ITU, Geneva,
      Switzerland, July 2003.
 [15] Handley, M. and V. Jacobson, "SDP: Session Description
      Protocol", RFC 2327, April 1998.
 [16] Schulzrinne, H., Rao, A. and R. Lanphier, "Real Time Streaming
      Protocol (RTSP)", RFC 2326, April 1998.
 [17] Eastlake 3rd, D., Crocker, S. and J. Schiller, "Randomness
      Recommendations for Security", RFC 1750, December 1994.
 [18] Bolot, J.-C., Turletti, T. and I. Wakeman, "Scalable Feedback
      Control for Multicast Video Distribution in the Internet", in
      SIGCOMM Symposium on Communications Architectures and Protocols,
      (London, England), pp. 58--67, ACM, August 1994.
 [19] Busse, I., Deffner, B. and H. Schulzrinne, "Dynamic QoS Control
      of Multimedia Applications Based on RTP", Computer
      Communications , vol. 19, pp. 49--58, January 1996.
 [20] Floyd, S. and V. Jacobson, "The Synchronization of Periodic
      Routing Messages", in SIGCOMM Symposium on Communications
      Architectures and Protocols (D. P. Sidhu, ed.), (San Francisco,
      California), pp. 33--44, ACM, September 1993.  Also in [34].
 [21] Rosenberg, J. and H. Schulzrinne, "Sampling of the Group
      Membership in RTP", RFC 2762, February 2000.
 [22] Cadzow, J., Foundations of Digital Signal Processing and Data
      Analysis New York, New York: Macmillan, 1987.
 [23] Hinden, R. and S. Deering, "Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6)
      Addressing Architecture", RFC 3513, April 2003.
 [24] Rekhter, Y., Moskowitz, B., Karrenberg, D., de Groot, G. and E.
      Lear, "Address Allocation for Private Internets", RFC 1918,
      February 1996.

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 101] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

 [25] Lear, E., Fair, E., Crocker, D. and T. Kessler, "Network 10
      Considered Harmful (Some Practices Shouldn't be Codified)", RFC
      1627, July 1994.
 [26] Feller, W., An Introduction to Probability Theory and its
      Applications, vol. 1.  New York, New York: John Wiley and Sons,
      third ed., 1968.
 [27] Kent, S. and R. Atkinson, "Security Architecture for the
      Internet Protocol", RFC 2401, November 1998.
 [28] Baugher, M., Blom, R., Carrara, E., McGrew, D., Naslund, M.,
      Norrman, K. and D. Oran, "Secure Real-time Transport Protocol",
      Work in Progress, April 2003.
 [29] Balenson, D., "Privacy Enhancement for Internet Electronic Mail:
      Part III", RFC 1423, February 1993.
 [30] Voydock, V. and S. Kent, "Security Mechanisms in High-Level
      Network Protocols", ACM Computing Surveys, vol. 15, pp. 135-171,
      June 1983.
 [31] Floyd, S., "Congestion Control Principles", BCP 41, RFC 2914,
      September 2000.
 [32] Rivest, R., "The MD5 Message-Digest Algorithm", RFC 1321, April
      1992.
 [33] Stubblebine, S., "Security Services for Multimedia
      Conferencing", in 16th National Computer Security Conference,
      (Baltimore, Maryland), pp. 391--395, September 1993.
 [34] Floyd, S. and V. Jacobson, "The Synchronization of Periodic
      Routing Messages", IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, vol. 2,
      pp. 122--136, April 1994.

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 102] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

Authors' Addresses

 Henning Schulzrinne
 Department of Computer Science
 Columbia University
 1214 Amsterdam Avenue
 New York, NY 10027
 United States
 EMail: schulzrinne@cs.columbia.edu
 Stephen L. Casner
 Packet Design
 3400 Hillview Avenue, Building 3
 Palo Alto, CA 94304
 United States
 EMail: casner@acm.org
 Ron Frederick
 Blue Coat Systems Inc.
 650 Almanor Avenue
 Sunnyvale, CA 94085
 United States
 EMail: ronf@bluecoat.com
 Van Jacobson
 Packet Design
 3400 Hillview Avenue, Building 3
 Palo Alto, CA 94304
 United States
 EMail: van@packetdesign.com

Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 103] RFC 3550 RTP July 2003

Full Copyright Statement

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 This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
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 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published
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Acknowledgement

 Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the
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Schulzrinne, et al. Standards Track [Page 104]

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