A.3 Determining the Number of RTP Packets Expected and Lost

In order to compute packet loss rates, the number of packets expected and actually received from each source needs to be known, using per- source state information defined in struct source referenced via pointer s in the code below. The number of packets received is simply the count of packets as they arrive, including any late or duplicate packets. The number of packets expected can be computed by the receiver as the difference between the highest sequence number received ( s->max_seq ) and the first sequence number received ( s- >base_seq ). Since the sequence number is only 16 bits and will wrap around, it is necessary to extend the highest sequence number with the (shifted) count of sequence number wraparounds ( s->cycles ). Both the received packet count and the count of cycles are maintained the RTP header validity check routine in Appendix A.1.

       extended_max = s->cycles + s->max_seq;
       expected = extended_max - s->base_seq + 1;

The number of packets lost is defined to be the number of packets expected less the number of packets actually received:

       lost = expected - s->received;

Since this number is carried in 24 bits, it should be clamped at 0xffffff rather than wrap around to zero.

The fraction of packets lost during the last reporting interval (since the previous SR or RR packet was sent) is calculated from differences in the expected and received packet counts across the interval, where expected_prior and received_prior are the values saved when the previous reception report was generated:

       expected_interval = expected - s->expected_prior;
       s->expected_prior = expected;
       received_interval = s->received - s->received_prior;
       s->received_prior = s->received;
       lost_interval = expected_interval - received_interval;
       if (expected_interval == 0 || lost_interval <= 0) fraction = 0;
       else fraction = (lost_interval << 8) / expected_interval;

The resulting fraction is an 8-bit fixed point number with the binary point at the left edge.