The IESG has approved the following Internet-Drafts as Draft
Standards:
o RTP: A Transport Protocol for Real-Time Applications
<draft-ietf-avt-rtp-new-12.txt>, obsoleting RFC1889, currently a
Proposed Standard.
o RTP Profile for Audio and Video Conferences with Minimal Control
<draft-ietf-avt-profile-new-13.txt> obsoleting RFC1890, currently
a Proposed Standard.
These documents are the products of the Audio/Video Transport Working
Group. The IESG contact persons are Allison Mankin and Scott Bradner.
Technical Summary
The first 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.
A well-exercised capability for DES encryption of RTP and RTCP
packets is part of the document, along with extensive
considerations on use of the feature. A new profile of RTP
called Secure RTP (SRTP) is under way that will provide encryption
with AES since DES is not considered strong, and provide much
better security support. However it was deemed that RTP and
RTCP should be advanced to Draft Standard with their currently
deployed security feature rather than waiting for the future
standardization of SRTP (and its eligibility for Draft), because
the practical use of DES-encrypted media with RTP has been
extensive.
This document obsoletes RFC 1889.
The second document defines aspects of RTP that complete a
profile for the use within audio and video conferences with
minimal session control. In particular, no support for the
negotiation of parameters or membership control is provided. The
profile is useful in sessions where no negotiation or membership
control are used (e.g., using the static payload types and the
membership indications provided by RTCP), but this profile is also
useful in conjunction with a higher-level control protocol, and it
is invoked by uses of media managed by Session Description Protocol
(RFC2327) as well in frequent practice.
This document obsoletes RFC 1890.
Working Group Summary
The AVT Working Group conducted careful review of the two
documents and their clarification. There was a strong effort
to ensure the implementation test plan and report had extensive
review as well. The differences from the Proposed Standard to
the Draft Standards are minor, are well-documented in sections
of the two documents, and do not result in any on-the-wire
changes to the protocols.
There was strong working group support for the advancement
to Draft Standard.
Protocol Quality
RTP and RTCP have been in use on the Internet for many years.
As the implementation report shows, there are two independent
open source implementations that are very full, as well as many
commercial ones. RTP and RTCP and their payloads are used in
numerous applications, in conjunction with other established
protocols, such as Session Initiation Protocol in telephony
applications. The documents were reviewed for the IESG by
Allison Mankin.
