RTP Status

RTP and the associated audio-video profile are Internet Standard protocols, designated as STD 64 and STD 65, documented in RFC 3550 and 3551.

SRTP, the secure profile of RTP, is recommended for applications that need privacy or authentication.

Early History

On November 22, 1995, RTP was approved by the IESG as an Internet proposed standard. It has been published as

In a January 31, 1996 news release, Netscape announced "Netscape LiveMedia, a standards-based framework for bringing real-time audio and video to the Netscape open software platform. ... The Netscape LiveMedia framework will be based on the Internet Realtime Transport Protocol (RTP), RFC number 1889, and other open audio and video standards such as MPEG, H.261 and GSM to enable products from these and other companies to work together seamlessly, providing users with a range of real-time audio and video capabilities on the Internet." An interview with M. Andreessen contains comments.

Intel, Microsoft and a consortium of over 100 technology vendors vowed to build an open platform based on existing standards "to make video, voice and data communications over the Internet as commonplace as a simple telephone call." The International Multimedia Teleconferencing Consortium (IMTC), which is the group pushing for an open Internet communications platform, said that its implementation will be based on International Telecommunications Union (ITU) standards and Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) specifications, including T.120 (for data conferencing), H.323 (for audio and videoconferencing) and the RTP/RTCP and RSVP specifications. Microsoft said that it will include these communications capabilities as part of its ActiveX Technologies in future releases of the Windows operating system and associated developer kits. March 11, 1996

Microsoft claims that their NetMeeting Conferencing Software supports RTP (May 1996).

ITU study group (SG) 15 has agreed to use RTP for LAN-based conferencing interoperable with H.320.

The IESG has received a request from the Audio/Video Transport Working Group to consider "RTP Payload Format of CellB Video Encoding" (draft-ietf-avt-cellb-07.txt) for the status of Proposed Standard. The IESG plans to make a decision in the next few weeks, and solicits final comments on this action. Please send any comments to the iesg@cnri.reston.va.us or ietf@cnri.reston.va.us mailing lists by December 27, 1995.

The real-time streaming protocol (RTSP) for streaming audio and video was proposed by a industry consortium.


Last modified: October 14, 1996 by Henning Schulzrinne