10. RTP over Network and Transport Protocols

This section describes issues specific to carrying RTP packets within particular network and transport protocols. The following rules apply unless superseded by protocol-specific definitions outside this specification.

RTP relies on the underlying protocol(s) to provide demultiplexing of RTP data and RTCP control streams. For UDP and similar protocols, RTP uses an even port number and the corresponding RTCP stream uses the next higher (odd) port number. If an application is supplied with an odd number for use as the RTP port, it should replace this number with the next lower (even) number.

RTP data packets contain no length field or other delineation, therefore RTP relies on the underlying protocol(s) to provide a length indication. The maximum length of RTP packets is limited only by the underlying protocols.

If RTP packets are to be carried in an underlying protocol that provides the abstraction of a continuous octet stream rather than messages (packets), an encapsulation of the RTP packets must be defined to provide a framing mechanism. Framing is also needed if the underlying protocol may contain padding so that the extent of the RTP payload cannot be determined. The framing mechanism is not defined here.

A profile may specify a framing method to be used even when RTP is carried in protocols that do provide framing in order to allow carrying several RTP packets in one lower-layer protocol data unit, such as a UDP packet. Carrying several RTP packets in one network or transport packet reduces header overhead and may simplify synchronization between different streams.