RTP Protocol
CategoryInternet Protocol
Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) provides end-to-end network transport functions suitable for applications transmitting multimedia content, such as audio, video or simulation data, over unicast or multicast network services on the Internet and private network infrastructure.
Media Content Delivery
Voice and Video Data Transmission
RTP is primarily designed to carry data that has real-time properties — to satisfy the needs of voice calls, multi-participant multimedia conferences, interactive distributed simulations, control and measurements, and other integrated services.
The protocol may be used for a variety of applications, where extensions for a particular environment are defined in a separate profile standard — e.g. Audio-Visual Profile, and a companion payload format specification — e.g. H.264 Advanced Video Coding.
RTP does not address media resource reservation and does not guarantee quality-of-service for real-time rich content delivery — this is addressed by using RSVP, RTCP and other protocols that negotiate, monitor and convey service attributes.
RTP is designed to be independent of the underlying transport and network layers, and is typically run on top of UDP to make use of its multiplexing and checksum services. It also supports data transfer to multiple destinations using multicast distribution if provided by the underlying network, where the sender does not know all the receivers.
