Connected: An Internet Encyclopedia
6.1 RTCP Packet Format

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6.1 RTCP Packet Format

6.1 RTCP Packet Format

This specification defines several RTCP packet types to carry a variety of control information:

SR
Sender report, for transmission and reception statistics from participants that are active senders

RR
Receiver report, for reception statistics from participants that are not active senders

SDES
Source description items, including CNAME

BYE
Indicates end of participation

APP
Application specific functions

Each RTCP packet begins with a fixed part similar to that of RTP data packets, followed by structured elements that may be of variable length according to the packet type but always end on a 32-bit boundary. The alignment requirement and a length field in the fixed part are included to make RTCP packets "stackable". Multiple RTCP packets may be concatenated without any intervening separators to form a compound RTCP packet that is sent in a single packet of the lower layer protocol, for example UDP. There is no explicit count of individual RTCP packets in the compound packet since the lower layer protocols are expected to provide an overall length to determine the end of the compound packet.

Each individual RTCP packet in the compound packet may be processed independently with no requirements upon the order or combination of packets. However, in order to perform the functions of the protocol, the following constraints are imposed:

Thus, all RTCP packets must be sent in a compound packet of at least two individual packets, with the following format recommended:

Encryption prefix
If and only if the compound packet is to be encrypted, it is prefixed by a random 32-bit quantity redrawn for every compound packet transmitted.

SR or RR
The first RTCP packet in the compound packet must always be a report packet to facilitate header validation as described in Appendix A.2. This is true even if no data has been sent nor received, in which case an empty RR is sent, and even if the only other RTCP packet in the compound packet is a BYE.

Additional RRs
If the number of sources for which reception statistics are being reported exceeds 31, the number that will fit into one SR or RR packet, then additional RR packets should follow the initial report packet.

SDES
An SDES packet containing a CNAME item must be included in each compound RTCP packet. Other source description items may optionally be included if required by a particular application, subject to bandwidth constraints (see Section 6.2.2).

BYE or APP
Other RTCP packet types, including those yet to be defined, may follow in any order, except that BYE should be the last packet sent with a given SSRC/CSRC. Packet types may appear more than once.

It is advisable for translators and mixers to combine individual RTCP packets from the multiple sources they are forwarding into one compound packet whenever feasible in order to amortize the packet overhead (see Section 7). An example RTCP compound packet as might be produced by a mixer is shown in Fig. 1. If the overall length of a compound packet would exceed the maximum transmission unit (MTU) of the network path, it may be segmented into multiple shorter compound packets to be transmitted in separate packets of the underlying protocol. Note that each of the compound packets must begin with an SR or RR packet.

An implementation may ignore incoming RTCP packets with types unknown to it. Additional RTCP packet types may be registered with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA).


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Connected: An Internet Encyclopedia
6.1 RTCP Packet Format