One document matched: draft-lennox-avt-rtp-audio-level-exthdr-00.txt
AVT J. Lennox
Internet-Draft Vidyo
Intended status: Standards Track June 17, 2009
Expires: December 19, 2009
A Real-Time Transport Protocol (RTP) Extension Header for Audio Level
Indication
draft-lennox-avt-rtp-audio-level-exthdr-00
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Internet-Draft RTP Extension Header for Audio Level June 2009
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Abstract
This document defines a mechanism by which packets of Real-Time
Transport Protocol (RTP) audio streams can indicate, in an RTP
extension header, the audio level of the audio sample carried in the
RTP packet. In large conferences, this can reduce the load on an
audio mixer or other middlebox which wants to forward only a few of
the loudest audio streams, without requiring it to decode and measure
every stream that is received.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. Audio Levels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
4. Signaling (Setup) Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
5. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
6. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
7. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
7.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
7.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Appendix A. Open issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
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1. Introduction
In a centralized Real-Time Transport Protocol (RTP) [RFC3550] audio
conference, an audio mixer or forwarder receives audio streams from
many or all of the conference participants. It then selectively
forwards some of them to other participants in the conference. In
large conferences, it is possible that such a server might be
receiving a large number of streams, of which only a few should be
forwarded to the other conference participants.
In such a scenario, in order to pick the audio streams to forward, a
centralized server needs to decode, measure audio levels, and
possibly perform voice activity detection on audio data from a large
number of streams. The need for such processing limits the size or
number of conferences such a server can support.
As an alternative, this document defines an RTP header extension
[RFC5285] through which senders of audio packets can indicate the
audio level of the packets' payload, reducing the processing load for
a server.
The header extension in this draft is different to, but complementary
with, the one defined in [I-D.ivov-avt-slic], which defines a
mechanism by which audio mixers can indicate the relative levels of
the contributing sources that made up the mixed audio.
2. Terminology
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [RFC2119] and
indicate requirement levels for compliant implementations.
3. Audio Levels
The audio level extension header carries both the level of the audio
carried in the RTP payload of the packet it is associated with, as
well as an indication as to whether voice activity has been detected
in the packet.
The form of the audio level extension block is as follows:
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0 1 2
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| ID | len=1 |0| level |V| reserved |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 1
The length field takes the value 1 to indicate that 2 bytes follow.
The audio level is defined in the same manner as is audio noise level
in the RTP Comfort Noise [RFC3389] specification. In that
specification, the overall magnitude of the noise level is encoded
into the first byte of the payload, with spectral information about
the noise in subsequent bytes. This specification's audio level
parameter is defined so as to be identical to the comfort noise
payload's noise-level byte.
The magnitude of the audio level is packed into the least significant
bits of the first payload byte of the extension header, with the most
significant bit unused and set to 0 as shown in Figure 1. The least
significant bit of the audio level magnitude is packed into the least
significant bit of the byte.
The audio level is expressed in -dBov, with values from 0 to 127
representing 0 to -127 dBov. dBov is the level, in decibels, relative
to the overload point of the system, i.e. the maximum-amplitude
signal that can be handled by the system without clipping. (Note:
Representation relative to the overload point of a system is
particularly useful for digital implementations, since one does not
need to know the relative calibration of the analog circuitry.) For
example, in the case of u-law (audio/pcmu) audio [ITU.G711.1988], the
0 dBov reference would be a square wave with values +/- 8031. (This
translates to 6.18 dBm0, relative to u-law's dBm0 definition in Table
6 of G.711.)
In addition, a flag byte carries bits providing additional
information about the audio payload carried in the media packet. At
this time only a single bit is defined. The V bit indicates whether
the encoder believes the audio packet contains voice activity (1) or
does not (0). The voice activity detection algorithm is unspecified
and left implementation-specific.
The other bits of the flag byte are reserved. They SHOULD be set to
zero by senders and ignored by receivers.
When this extension header is used with RTP data sent using the RTP
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Payload for Redundant Audio Data [RFC2198], the header's data
describes the contents of the primary encoding.
4. Signaling (Setup) Information
The URI for declaring this header extension in an extmap attribute is
"urn:ietf:params:rtp-hdrext:audio-level". There is no additional
setup information needed for this extension (no extensionattributes).
5. Security Considerations
A malicious endpoint could choose to set the values in this extension
header falsely, so as to falsely claim that audio or voice is or is
not present. It is not clear what could be gained by falsely
claiming that audio is not present, but an endpoint falsely claiming
that audio is present could perform a denial-of-service attack on an
audio conference, so as to send silence to suppress other conference
members' audio. Thus, a device relying on audio level data from
untrusted endpoints SHOULD periodically audit the level information
transmitted, taking appropriate corrective action if endpoints appear
to be sending incorrect data.
In the Secure Real-Time Transport Protocol (SRTP) [RFC3711], RTP
extension headers are authenticated but not encrypted. When this
extension header is used, audio levels are therefore visible on a
packet-by-packet basis to an attacker passively observing the audio
stream. As discussed in [I-D.perkins-avt-srtp-vbr-audio], such an
attacker can infer a great deal of information about the
conversation, often with phoneme-level resolution. In scenarios
where this is a concern, additional mechanisms SHOULD be used to
protect the confidentiality of the extension header.
6. IANA Considerations
This document defines a new extension URI to the RTP Compact Header
Extensions subregistry of the Real-Time Transport Protocol (RTP)
Parameters registry, according to the following data:
Extension URI: urn:ietf:params:rtp-hdrext:audio-level
Description: Audio Level
Contact: jonathan@vidyo.com
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Reference: RFC XXXX
7. References
7.1. Normative References
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
[RFC2198] Perkins, C., Kouvelas, I., Hodson, O., Hardman, V.,
Handley, M., Bolot, J., Vega-Garcia, A., and S. Fosse-
Parisis, "RTP Payload for Redundant Audio Data", RFC 2198,
September 1997.
[RFC3550] Schulzrinne, H., Casner, S., Frederick, R., and V.
Jacobson, "RTP: A Transport Protocol for Real-Time
Applications", STD 64, RFC 3550, July 2003.
[RFC5285] Singer, D. and H. Desineni, "A General Mechanism for RTP
Header Extensions", RFC 5285, July 2008.
7.2. Informative References
[I-D.ivov-avt-slic]
Ivov, E. and E. Marocco, "Delivering Conference
Participant Sound Level Indicators in RTP Streams",
draft-ivov-avt-slic-00 (work in progress), June 2009.
[I-D.perkins-avt-srtp-vbr-audio]
Perkins, C., "Guidelines for the use of Variable Bit Rate
Audio with Secure RTP",
draft-perkins-avt-srtp-vbr-audio-00 (work in progress),
March 2009.
[ITU.G711.1988]
International Telecommunications Union, "Pulse code
modulation (PCM) of voice frequencies", ITU-
T Recommendation G.711, November 1988.
[RFC3389] Zopf, R., "Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) Payload for
Comfort Noise (CN)", RFC 3389, September 2002.
[RFC3711] Baugher, M., McGrew, D., Naslund, M., Carrara, E., and K.
Norrman, "The Secure Real-time Transport Protocol (SRTP)",
RFC 3711, March 2004.
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Appendix A. Open issues
o Should this draft be merged with [I-D.ivov-avt-slic]?
o Would it be useful to add a fractional part to the audio level,
e.g., to describe the audio level in an 8+8 fixed-point format?
Due to the format of RTP extension headers, a third byte for the
extension header is essentially "free" if no other RTP extension
headers are in use.
o Are any other bits useful in the flag byte?
o Is there any compelling use case for providing the audio level
without voice detection information, and if so, should the two
pieces of information be separated?
Author's Address
Jonathan Lennox
Vidyo, Inc.
433 Hackensack Avenue
Sixth Floor
Hackensack, NJ 07601
US
Email: jonathan@vidyo.com
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