SDP Protocol
CategoryInternet Protocol
Session Description Protocol (SDP) is intended for describing multimedia sessions for the purposes of announcement, invitation and other forms of session initiation. It is widely used when initiating multimedia teleconferences, placing Voice-over-IP (VoIP) calls and streaming video.
Media Session Characteristics
Voice and Video Session Description
SDP provides a standard representation for media session information, irrespective of how it is transported — such as media, bandwidth and transport details.
SDP is purely a format for session description which is intended to use different transport protocols as appropriate — such as SIP, RTSP and HTTP. The protocol is general-purpose so that it can be used in a wide range of network environments and applications, but it is not intended to support negotiation of session content or media encodings.
In general, SDP must convey sufficient information to enable applications to join a media session (with the possible exception of encryption keys) and to announce the resources to be used to any non-participants that may need to know (primarily useful with a multicast media session announcement, where the receivers are not known up front).
A session description typically includes session name/purpose, time(s) it is active, media details, and means to receive those media (IP addresses, ports, formats, etc.)
