[vorbis-dev] RTP

[Jack Moffitt]

> I've seen several references to RTP now, both here and in some other
> forums, and I've browsed the RFC a bit, but I'm still a little confused
> as to "what is RTP?".  Obviously it's a protocol, but what does adhering
> to the protocol buy you?  Does it guarantee interoperability with other
> applications?  I had assumed that any streaming/multicast type
> application would likely implement its own protocol, so I'm not sure
> what the value-add of RTP support is.

RTP is for realtime data like streaming audio/video.  It's normally used
over UDP or Multicast (although multicast is where you commonly find
it).  It has some advantages over Ogg/TCP in that it will degrade
nicely.  It won't wait forever for packets if they don't appear.  After
all, at a certain point it's not worth waiting for anyway with realtime
data.

RTP is useless by itself though.  The packets must have a payload, and
the payload format is codec specific.  So generally an RTP system will
include that, as well as some other things for other parts of the
system.  This area of the standards is quite intertwined, and it seems
to make some amount of sense.

It guaruntees interoperability (as much as anything like that can
'guaruntee') as the protocol level.  Anything that doesn't need to know
about the payload format can manipulate rtp packets.

So you do implement your own payload format, but then RTP acts as your
generic transport medium.

jack.

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