One document matched: draft-lennox-avtcore-rtp-multi-stream-02.xml


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="US-ASCII"?>
<!DOCTYPE rfc SYSTEM "rfc2629.dtd" [
<!ENTITY rfc2119 SYSTEM "reference.RFC.2119.xml">
<!ENTITY rtp SYSTEM "reference.RFC.3550.xml">
<!ENTITY rtptopo SYSTEM "reference.I-D.westerlund-avtcore-rtp-topologies-update.xml">
<!ENTITY sip SYSTEM "reference.RFC.3261.xml">
<!ENTITY sdp SYSTEM "reference.RFC.4566.xml">
<!ENTITY srtp SYSTEM "reference.RFC.3711.xml">
<!ENTITY mikey SYSTEM "reference.RFC.3830.xml">
<!ENTITY rtprtx SYSTEM "reference.RFC.4588.xml">
<!ENTITY avpf SYSTEM "reference.RFC.4585.xml">
<!ENTITY offeranswer SYSTEM "reference.RFC.3264.xml">
<!ENTITY bundle SYSTEM "reference.I-D.ietf-mmusic-sdp-bundle-negotiation.xml">
<!ENTITY savpf SYSTEM "reference.RFC.5124.xml">
<!ENTITY reducedrtcp SYSTEM "reference.RFC.5506.xml">
<!ENTITY sourcedesc SYSTEM "reference.RFC.5576.xml">
<!ENTITY clue SYSTEM "reference.I-D.ietf-clue-framework.xml">
<!ENTITY xr SYSTEM "reference.RFC.3611.xml">
<!ENTITY session SYSTEM "reference.I-D.ietf-avtcore-multi-media-rtp-session.xml">
<!ENTITY cname SYSTEM "reference.RFC.6222.xml">
]>
<?rfc toc="yes" ?>
<?rfc strict="yes" ?>
<?rfc compact="yes" ?>
<?rfc sortrefs="yes" ?>
<?rfc symrefs="yes" ?>
<rfc category="std" docName="draft-lennox-avtcore-rtp-multi-stream-02"
     ipr="trust200902" updates="3550">
  <front>
    <title abbrev="RTP Multi-Stream Considerations">RTP Considerations for
    Endpoints Sending Multiple Media Streams</title>

    <author fullname="Jonathan Lennox" initials="J." surname="Lennox">
      <organization abbrev="Vidyo">Vidyo, Inc.</organization>

      <address>
        <postal>
          <street>433 Hackensack Avenue</street>

          <street>Seventh Floor</street>

          <city>Hackensack</city>

          <region>NJ</region>

          <code>07601</code>

          <country>US</country>
        </postal>

        <email>jonathan@vidyo.com</email>
      </address>
    </author>

    <author fullname="Magnus Westerlund" initials="M." surname="Westerlund">
      <organization>Ericsson</organization>

      <address>
        <postal>
          <street>Farogatan 6</street>

          <city>SE-164 80 Kista</city>

          <country>Sweden</country>
        </postal>

        <phone>+46 10 714 82 87</phone>

        <email>magnus.westerlund@ericsson.com</email>
      </address>
    </author>

    <author fullname="Qin Wu" initials="Q." surname="Wu">
      <organization>Huawei</organization>

      <address>
        <postal>
          <street>101 Software Avenue, Yuhua District</street>

          <city>Nanjing, Jiangsu 210012</city>

          <country>China</country>
        </postal>

        <email>sunseawq@huawei.com</email>
      </address>
    </author>

    <author fullname="Colin Perkins" initials="C. " surname="Perkins">
      <organization>University of Glasgow</organization>

      <address>
        <postal>
          <street>School of Computing Science</street>

          <city>Glasgow</city>

          <code>G12 8QQ</code>

          <country>United Kingdom</country>
        </postal>

        <email>csp@csperkins.org</email>
      </address>
    </author>

    <date/>

    <area>RAI</area>

    <workgroup>AVTCORE</workgroup>

    <keyword>I-D</keyword>

    <keyword>Internet-Draft</keyword>

    <!-- TODO: more keywords -->

    <abstract>
      <t>This document expands and clarifies the behavior of the Real-Time
      Transport Protocol (RTP) endpoints when they are sending multiple media
      streams in a single RTP session. In particular, issues involving
      Real-Time Transport Control Protocol (RTCP) messages are described.</t>

      <t>This document updates RFC 3550 in regards to handling of multiple
      SSRCs per endpoint in RTP sessions.</t>
    </abstract>
  </front>

  <middle>
    <section anchor="introduction" title="Introduction">
      <t>At the time The <xref target="RFC3550">Real-Time Transport Protocol
      (RTP)</xref> was originally written, and for quite some time after,
      endpoints in RTP sessions typically only transmitted a single media
      stream per RTP session, where separate RTP sessions were typically used
      for each distinct media type.</t>

      <t>Recently, however, a number of scenarios have emerged (discussed
      further in <xref target="usecases"/>) in which endpoints wish to send
      multiple RTP media streams, distinguished by distinct RTP
      synchronization source (SSRC) identifiers, in a single RTP session.
      Although RTP's initial design did consider such scenarios, the
      specification was not consistently written with such use cases in mind.
      The specifications are thus somewhat unclear.</t>

      <t>The purpose of this document is to expand and clarify <xref
      target="RFC3550"/>'s language for these use cases. The authors believe
      this does not result in any major normative changes to the RTP
      specification, however this document defines how the RTP specification
      is to be interpreted. In these cases, this document updates RFC3550.</t>

      <t>The document starts with terminology and some use cases where
      multiple sources will occur. This is followed by some case studies to
      try to identify issues that exist and need considerations. This is
      followed by RTP and RTCP recommendations to resolve issues. Next are
      security considerations and remaining open issues.</t>
    </section>

    <section title="Terminology">
      <t>The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
      "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
      "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in <xref
      target="RFC2119">RFC 2119</xref> and indicate requirement levels for
      compliant implementations.</t>
    </section>

    <section anchor="usecases" title="Use Cases For Multi-Stream Endpoints">
      <t>This section discusses several use cases that have motivated the
      development of endpoints that send multiple streams in a single RTP
      session.</t>

      <section anchor="telepresence" title="Multiple-Capturer Endpoints">
        <t>The most straightforward motivation for an endpoint to send
        multiple media streams in a session is the scenario where an endpoint
        has multiple capture devices of the same media type and
        characteristics. For example, telepresence endpoints, of the type
        described by the <xref target="I-D.ietf-clue-framework">CLUE
        Telepresence Framework</xref> is designed, often have multiple cameras
        or microphones covering various areas of a room.</t>
      </section>

      <section title="Multi-Media Sessions">
        <t>Recent work has been done in <xref
        target="I-D.ietf-avtcore-multi-media-rtp-session">RTP</xref> and <xref
        target="I-D.ietf-mmusic-sdp-bundle-negotiation">SDP</xref> to update
        RTP's historical assumption that media streams of different media
        types would always be sent on different RTP sessions. In this work, a
        single endpoint's audio and video media streams (for example) are
        instead sent in a single RTP session.</t>
      </section>

      <section title="Multi-Stream Mixers">
        <t>There are several RTP topologies which can involve a central device
        that itself generates multiple media streams in a session.</t>

        <t>One example is a mixer providing centralized compositing for a
        multi-capture scenario like that described in <xref
        target="telepresence"/>. In this case, the centralized node is
        behaving much like a multi-capturer endpoint, generating several
        similar and related sources.</t>

        <t>More complicated is the Source Projecting Mixer, see Section 3.6 of
        <xref target="I-D.westerlund-avtcore-rtp-topologies-update"/>. This is
        a central box that receives media streams from several endpoints, and
        then selectively forwards modified versions of some of the streams
        toward the other endpoints it is connected to. Toward one destination,
        a separate media source appears in the session for every other source
        connected to the mixer, "projected" from the original streams, but at
        any given time many of them can appear to be inactive (and thus are
        receivers, not senders, in RTP). This sort of device is closer to
        being an RTP mixer than an RTP translator, in that it terminates RTCP
        reporting about the mixed streams, and it can re-write SSRCs,
        timestamps, and sequence numbers, as well as the contents of the RTP
        payloads, and can turn sources on and off at will without appearing to
        be generating packet loss. Each projected stream will typically
        preserve its original RTCP source description (SDES) information.</t>
      </section>
    </section>

    <section title="Issue Cases">
      <t>This section illustrates some scenarios that have shown areas where
      the RTP specification is unclear.</t>

      <section anchor="source-proj-mixers"
               title="Cascaded Multi-party Conference with Source Projecting Mixers">
        <t>This issue case tries to illustrate the effect of having multiple
        SSRCs sent by an endpoint, by considering the traffic between two
        source-projecting mixers in a large multi-party conference.</t>

        <t>For concreteness, consider a 200-person conference, where 16
        sources are viewed at any given time. Assuming participants are
        distributed evenly among the mixers, each mixer would have 100 sources
        "behind" (projected through) it, of which at any given time eight are
        active senders. Thus, the RTP session between the mixers consists of
        two endpoints, but 200 sources.</t>

        <t>The RTCP bandwidth implications of this scenario are discussed
        further in <xref target="reportgroups-bw"/>.</t>

        <t>(TBD: Other examples? Can this section be removed?)</t>
      </section>
    </section>

    <section title="Multi-Stream Endpoint RTP Media Recommendations">
      <t>While an endpoint MUST (of course) stay within its share of the
      available session bandwidth, as determined by signalling and congestion
      control, this need not be applied independently or uniformly to each
      media stream. In particular, session bandwidth MAY be reallocated among
      an endpoint's media streams, for example by varying the bandwidth use of
      a variable-rate codec, or changing the codec used by the media stream,
      up to the constraints of the session's negotiated (or declared) codecs.
      This includes enabling or disabling media streams as more or less
      bandwidth becomes available.</t>
    </section>

    <section title="Multi-Stream Endpoint RTCP Recommendations">
      <t>This section contains a number of different RTCP clarifications or
      recommendations that enables more efficient and simpler behavior without
      loss of functionality.</t>

      <t>The RTP Control Protocol (RTCP) is defined in Section 6 of <xref
      target="RFC3550"/>, but it is largely documented in terms of
      "participants". In many cases, the specification's recommendations for
      "participants" are to be interpreted as applying to individual media
      streams, rather than to endpoints. This section describes several
      concrete cases where this applies.</t>

      <t>(tbd: rather than think in terms of media streams, it might be
      clearer to refer to SSRC values, where a participant with multiple
      active SSRC values counts as multiple participants, once per SSRC)</t>

      <section title="RTCP Reporting Requirement">
        <t>For each of an endpoint's media streams, whether or not it is
        currently sending media, SR/RR and SDES packets MUST be sent at least
        once per RTCP report interval. (For discussion of the content of SR or
        RR packets' reception statistic reports, see <xref
        target="reportgroups"/>.)</t>
      </section>

      <section title="Initial Reporting Interval">
        <t>When a new media stream is added to a unicast session, the sentence
        in <xref target="RFC3550"/>'s Section 6.2 applies: "For unicast
        sessions ... the delay before sending the initial compound RTCP packet
        MAY be zero." This applies to individual media sources as well. Thus,
        endpoints MAY send an initial RTCP packet for an SSRC immediately upon
        adding it to a unicast session.</t>

        <t>This allowance also applies, as written, when initially joining a
        unicast session. However, in this case some caution needs to be
        exercised if the end-point or mixer has a large number of sources
        (SSRCs) as this can create a significant burst. How big an issue this
        depends on the number of source to send initial SR or RR and Session
        Description CNAME items for in relation to the RTCP bandwidth.</t>

        <t>(tbd: Maybe some recommendation here? The aim in restricting this
        to unicast sessions was to avoid this burst of traffic, which the
        usual RTCP timing and reconsideration rules will prevent)</t>
      </section>

      <section anchor="compound" title="Compound RTCP Packets">
        <t>Section 6.1 gives the following advice to RTP translators and
        mixers:</t>

        <t><list style="empty">
            <t>It is RECOMMENDED that translators and mixers 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 MTU
            of the network path, it SHOULD be segmented into multiple shorter
            compound packets to be transmitted in separate packets of the
            underlying protocol. This does not impair the RTCP bandwidth
            estimation because each compound packet represents at least one
            distinct participant. Note that each of the compound packets MUST
            begin with an SR or RR packet.</t>
          </list></t>

        <t>Note: To avoid confusion, an RTCP packet is an individual item,
        such as a Sender Report (SR), Receiver Report (RR), Source Description
        (SDES), Goodbye (BYE), Application Defined (APP), <xref
        target="RFC4585">Feedback</xref> or <xref target="RFC3611">Extended
        Report (XR)</xref> packet. A compound packet is the combination of two
        or more such RTCP packets where the first packet has to be an SR or an
        RR packet, and which contains a SDES packet containing an CNAME item.
        Thus the above results in compound RTCP packets that contain multiple
        SR or RR packets from different sources as well as any of the other
        packet types. There are no restrictions on the order in which the
        packets can occur within the compound packet, except the regular
        compound rule, i.e., starting with an SR or RR.</t>

        <t>This advice applies to multi-media-stream endpoints as well, with
        the same restrictions and considerations. (Note, however, that the
        last sentence does not apply to <xref target="RFC4585">AVPF</xref> or
        <xref target="RFC5124">SAVPF</xref> feedback packets if <xref
        target="RFC5506">Reduced-Size RTCP</xref> is in use.)</t>

        <t>Due to RTCP's randomization of reporting times, there is a fair bit
        of tolerance in precisely when an endpoint schedules RTCP to be sent.
        Thus, one potential way of implementing this recommendation would be
        to randomize all of an endpoint's sources together, with a single
        randomization schedule, so an MTU's worth of RTCP all comes out
        simultaneously.</t>

        <t>(tbd: Multiplexing RTCP packets from multiple different sources
        might require some adjustment to the calculation of RTCP's
        avg_rtcp_size, as the RTCP group interval is proportional to
        avg_rtcp_size times the group size).</t>
      </section>
    </section>

    <section title="RTCP Bandwidth Considerations for Sources with Disparate Rates">
      <t>It is possible for an RTP session to carry sources of greatly
      differing bandwidths. One example is the scenario of <xref
      target="I-D.ietf-avtcore-multi-media-rtp-session"/>, when audio and
      video are sent in the same session. However, this can occur even within
      a single media type, for example a video session carrying both 5 fps
      QCIF and 60 fps 1080p HD video, or an audio session carrying both G.729
      and L24/48000/6 audio.</t>

      <t>(tbd: recommend how RTCP bandwidths are to be chosen in these
      scenarios. Likely, these recommendations will be different for sessions
      using AVPF-based profiles (where the trr-int parameter is available)
      than for those using AVP.)</t>

      <!--MW: I think we can resolve this by a pointer to multi-media-rtp-session, or the text 
there ought to be moved here, and pointer in the other direction. -->
    </section>

    <section anchor="reportgroups"
             title="Grouping of RTCP Reception Statistics and Other Feedback">
      <t>As specified by <xref target="RFC3550"/>, an endpoint MUST send
      reception reports about every active media stream it is receiving, from
      at least one local source.</t>

      <t>However, a naive application of the RTP specification's rules could
      be quite inefficient. In particular, if a session has N SSRCs (active
      and inactive, i.e., participant SSRCs), and the session has S active
      senders in each reporting interval, there will either be N*S report
      blocks per reporting interval, or (per the round-robin recommendations
      of <xref target="RFC3550"/> Section 6.1) reception sources would be
      unnecessarily round-robinned. In a session where most media sources
      become senders reasonably frequently, this results in quadratically many
      reception report blocks in the conference, or reporting delays
      proportional to the number of session members.</t>

      <t>Since traffic is received by endpoints, however, rather than by media
      sources, there is not actually any need for this quadratic expansion.
      All that is needed is for each endpoint to report all the remote sources
      it is receiving.</t>

      <t>Thus, this document defines a new RTCP mechanism, Reporting Groups,
      to indicate sources which originate from the same endpoint, and which
      therefore would have identical recption reports.</t>

      <section title="Semantics and Behavior of Reporting Groups">
        <t>An RTCP Reporting Group indicates that a set of sources (SSRCs)
        that originate from a single entity (endpoint or middlebox) in an RTP
        session, and therefore all the sources in the group's view of the
        network is identical. If reporting groups are in use, two sources
        SHOULD be put into the same reporting group if their view of the
        network is identical; i.e., if they report on traffic received at the
        same interface of an RTP endpoint. Sources with different views of the
        network MUST NOT be put into the same reporting group.</t>

        <t>If reporting groups are in use, an endpoint MUST NOT send reception
        reports from one source in a reporting group about another one in the
        same group ("self-reports"). Similarly, an endpoint MUST NOT send
        reception reports about a remote media source from more than one
        source in a reporting group ("cross-reports"). Instead, it MUST pick
        one of its local media sources as the "reporting" source for each remote media source, and use it
        to send reception reports about that remote source; all the other media
        sources in the reporting group MUST NOT send any reception reports about
        that remote media source.</t>

		<t>This reporting source MUST also be the source
        for any <xref target="RFC4585">RTP/AVPF Feedback</xref> or <xref
        target="RFC3611">Extended Report (XR)</xref> packets about the
        corresponding remote sources as well. If a reporting source leaves the
        session (i.e., if it sends a BYE, or leaves the group without sending
        BYE under the rules of <xref target="RFC3550"/> section 6.3.7),
        another reporting source MUST be chosen if any members of the group
        still exist.</t>

        <t>An endpoint or middlebox MAY use multiple sources as
        reporting sources; however, each reporting source MUST have non-overlapping sets of
        remote SSRCs it reports on. This is primarily to be done when the
        reporting source's number of reception report blocks is so large that it
        would be forced to round robin around the sources. Thus, by splitting
        the reports among several reporting SSRCs more consistent reporting
        can be achieved.</t>

        <t>If RTP/AVPF feedback is in use, a reporting source MAY send
        immediate or early feedback at any point when any member of the
        reporting group could validly do so.</t>

        <t>An endpoint SHOULD NOT create single-source reporting groups,
        unless it is anticipated that the group might have additional sources
        added to it in the future.</t>
      </section>

      <section title="Determine the Report Group">
        <t>A remote RTP entity, such as an endpoint or a middlebox needs to be
        able to determine the report group used by another RTP entity. To
        achieve this goal two RTCP extensions has been defined. For the SSRCs
        that are reporting on behalf of the reporting group an SDES item RGRP
        has been defined for providing the report group with an identifier.
        For SSRCs that aren't reporting on any peer SSRC a new RTCP packet
        type is defined. This RTCP packet type "Reporting Sources", lists the
        SSRC that are reporting on this SSRC's behalf.</t>

        <t>This divided approach has been selected for the following
        reasons:<list style="numbers">
            <t>Enable an explicit indication of who reports on this SSRC's
            behalf. Being explicit prevents the remote entity from detecting
            that is missing the reports if there issues with the reporting
            SSRC's RTCP packets.</t>

            <t>Enable explicit identification of the SSRCs that are actively
            reporting as one entity.</t>
          </list></t>

        <t/>
      </section>

      <section title="RTCP Packet Reporting Group's Reporting Sources">
        <t>This section defines a new RTCP packet type called "Reporting
        Group's Reporting Sources" (RGRS). It identifies the SSRC(s) that
        report on behalf of the SSRC that is the sender of the RGRS
        packet.</t>

        <t>This packet consists of the fixed RTCP packet header which
        indicates the packet type, the number of reporting sources included
        and the SSRC which behalf the reporting SSRCs report on. This is
        followed by the list of reporting SSRCs.</t>

        <figure>
          <artwork><![CDATA[
 0                   1                   2                   3   
 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
|V=2|P|    SC   | PT=RGRS(TBA)  |             length            |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
|                     SSRC of packet sender                     |
+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
:                     SSRC for Reporting Source                 :
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+]]></artwork>
        </figure>

        <t>The RTCP Packets field has the following definition.<list
            style="hanging">
            <t hangText="version (V):">This field identifies the RTP version.
            The current version is 2.</t>

            <t hangText="padding (P):">1 bit If set, the padding bit indicates
            that the packet contains additional padding octets at the end that
            are not part of the control information but are included in the
            length field. See <xref target="RFC3550"/>.</t>

            <t hangText="Source Count (SC):">5 bits Indicating the number of
            reporting SSRCs (1-31) that are include in this RTCP packet
            type.</t>

            <t hangText="Payload type (PT):">8 bits This is the RTCP packet
            type that identifies the packet as being an RTCP FB message. The
            RGRS RTCP packet has the value [TBA].</t>

            <t hangText="Length:">16 bits The length of this packet in 32-bit
            words minus one, including the header and any padding. This is in
            line with the definition of the length field used in RTCP sender
            and receiver reports <xref target="RFC3550"/>.</t>

            <t hangText="SSRC of packet sender:">32 bits. The SSRC of the
            sender of this packet which indicates which SSRCs that reports on
            its behalf, instead of reporting itself.</t>

            <t hangText="SSRC for Reporting Source:">A variable number (as
            indicated by Source Count) of 32-bit SSRC values. Each SSRC is an
            reporting SSRC belonging to the same Report Group.</t>
          </list></t>

        <t>Each RGRS packet MUST contain at least one reporting SSRC. In case
        the reporting SSRC field is insufficient to list all the SSRCs that is
        reporting in this report group, the SSRC SHALL round robin around the
        reporting sources.</t>

        <t>Any RTP mixer or translator which forwards SR or RR packets from
        members of a reporting group MUST forward the corresponding RGRS RTCP
        packet as well.</t>
      </section>

      <section title="RTCP Source Description (SDES) item for Reporting Groups">
        <t>A new RTCP Source Description (SDES) item is defined for the
        purpose of identifying reporting groups.</t>

        <t>The Source Description (SDES) item "RGRP" is sent by a reporting
        group's reporting SSRC. Syntactically, its format is the same as the
        <xref target="RFC6222">RTCP SDES CNAME item</xref>, and MUST be chosen
        with the same global-uniqueness and privacy considerations as CNAME.
        This name MUST be stable across the lifetime of the reporting group,
        even if the SSRC of a reporting source changes.</t>

        <t>Every source which belongs to a reporting group MUST either include
        an RGRP SDES item in an SDES packet (if it is a reporting source), or an RGRS packet (if it is not), in
        every compound RTCP packet in which it sends an RR or SR packet
        (i.e., in every RTCP packet it sends, unless <xref
        target="RFC5506">Reduced-Size RTCP</xref> is in use).</t>

        <t>Any RTP mixer or translator which forwards SR or RR packets from
        members of a reporting group MUST forward the corresponding RGRP SDES
        items as well, even if it otherwise strips SDES items other than
        CNAME.</t>

      </section>

      <section title="Middlebox Considerations">
        <t>This section discusses middlebox considerations for Reporting
        groups.</t>

        <t>To be expanded.</t>
      </section>

      <section title="SDP signaling for Reporting Groups">
        <t>TBD</t>
      </section>

      <section anchor="reportgroups-bw"
               title="Bandwidth Benefits of RTCP Reporting Groups">
        <t>To understand the benefits of RTCP reporting groups, consider the
        scenario described in <xref target="source-proj-mixers"/>. This
        scenario describes an environment in which the two endpoints in a
        session each have a hundred sources, of which eight each are sending
        within any given reporting interval.</t>

        <t>For ease of analysis, we can make the simplifying approximation
        that the duration of the RTCP reporting interval is equal to the total
        size of the RTCP packets sent during an RTCP interval, divided by the
        RTCP bandwidth. (This will be approximately true in scenarios where
        the bandwidth is not so high that the minimum RTCP interval is
        reached.) For further simplification, we can assume RTCP senders are
        following the recommendations of <xref target="compound"/>; thus, the
        per-packet transport-layer overhead will be small relative to the RTCP
        data. Thus, only the actual RTCP data itself need be considered.</t>

        <t>In a report interval in this scenario, there will, as a baseline,
        be 200 SDES packets, 184 RR packets, and 16 SR packets. This amounts
        to approximately 6.5 kB of RTCP per report interval, assuming 16-byte
        CNAMEs and no other SDES information.</t>

        <t>Using the original <xref target="RFC3550"/>
        everyone-reports-on-every-sender feedback rules, each of the 184
        receivers will send 16 report blocks, and each of the 16 senders will
        send 15. This amounts to approximately 76 kB of report block traffic
        per interval; 92% of RTCP traffic consists of report blocks.</t>

        <t>If reporting groups are used, however, there is only 0.4 kB of
        reports per interval, with no loss of useful information.
        Additionally, there will be (assuming 16-byte RGRPs, and a single reporting source per reporting group) an
        additional 2.4 kB per cycle of RGRP SDES items and RGRS packets. Put another
        way, the unmodified <xref target="RFC3550"/> reporting interval is approximately 8.9
        times longer than if reporting groups are in use.</t>
      </section>

      <section title="Consequences of RTCP Reporting Groups">
        <t>The RTCP traffic generated by receivers using RTCP Reporting Groups
        might appear, to observers unaware of these semantics, to be generated
        by receivers who are experiencing a network disconnection, as the
        non-reporting sources appear not to be receiving a given sender at
        all.</t>

        <t>This could be a potentially critical problem for such a sender
        using RTCP for congestion control, as such a sender might think that
        it is sending so much traffic that it is causing complete congestion
        collapse.</t>

        <t>However, such an interpretation of the session statistics would
        require a fairly sophisticated RTCP analysis. Any receiver of RTCP
        statistics which is just interested in information about itself needs
        to be prepared that any given reception report might not contain
        information about a specific media source, because reception reports
        in large conferences can be round-robined.</t>

        <t>Thus, it is unclear to what extent such backward compatibility
        issues would actually cause trouble in practice.</t>
      </section>
    </section>

    <section anchor="security" title="Security Considerations">
      <t>In the <xref target="RFC3711">secure RTP protocol (SRTP)</xref>, the
      cryptographic context of a compound SRTCP packet is the SSRC of the
      sender of the first RTCP (sub-)packet. This could matter in some cases,
      especially for keying mechanisms such as <xref
      target="RFC3830">Mikey</xref> which use per-SSRC keying.</t>

      <t>Other than that, the standard security considerations of RTP apply;
      sending multiple media streams from a single endpoint does not appear to
      have different security consequences than sending the same number of
      streams.</t>
    </section>

    <section title="Open Issues">
      <t>At this stage this document contains a number of open issues. The
      below list tries to summarize the issues:<list style="numbers">
          <t>Further clarifications on how to handle the RTCP scheduler when
          sending multiple sources in one compound packet.</t>

          <t>How is the use of reporting groups be signaled in SDP?</t>

          <t>How is the RTCP avg_rtcp_size be calculated when RTCP packets are
          routinely multiplexed among multiple RTCP senders?</t>

          <t>Do we need to provide a recommendation for unicast session
          joiners with many sources to not use 0 initial minimal interval from
          bit-rate burst perspective?</t>
        </list></t>

      <t/>
    </section>

    <section anchor="iana" title="IANA Considerations">
      <t>This document make several requests to IANA for registering new
      RTP/RTCP identifiers.</t>

      <t>(Note to the RFC-Editor: please replace "TBA" with the IANA-assigned
      value, and "XXXX" with the number of this document, prior to publication
      as an RFC.)</t>

      <section title="RTCP SDES Item">
        <t>This document adds an additional SDES types to the IANA "RTCP SDES
        Item Types" Registry, as follows:</t>

        <figure anchor="RTCP-item"
                title="Item for the IANA Source Attribute Registry">
          <artwork><![CDATA[
Value    Abbrev      Name              Reference
TBA      RGRP        Reporting Group   [RFCXXXX]
]]></artwork>
        </figure>
      </section>

      <section title="RTCP Packet Type">
        <t>This document defines one new RTCP Control Packet types (PT) to be
        registered as follows:</t>

        <figure anchor="iana-rtcp-pt"
                title="Item for the IANA RTCP Control Packet Types (PT) Registry">
          <artwork><![CDATA[
Value    Abbrev      Name                                Reference
TBA      RGRR        Reporting Group Reporting Sources   [RFCXXXX]
]]></artwork>
        </figure>

        <t/>
      </section>
    </section>
  </middle>

  <back>
    <references title="Normative References">
      &rfc2119;

      &rtp;

      &srtp;

      &avpf;

      &savpf;

      &reducedrtcp;

      &cname;
    </references>

    <references title="Informative References">
      &rtptopo;

      &bundle;

      &clue;

      &mikey;

      &xr;

      &session;

      <!-- &rtprtx; -->

      <!-- &sourcedesc; -->

      <!-- &sdp; -->

      <!-- &offeranswer; -->
    </references>

    <section title="Changes From Earlier Versions">
      <t>Note to the RFC-Editor: please remove this section prior to
      publication as an RFC.</t>

      <section title="Changes From Draft -01">
        <t><list style="symbols">
            <t>Merged with draft-wu-avtcore-multisrc-endpoint-adver.</t>

            <t>Changed how Reporting Groups are indicated in RTCP, to make it
            clear which source(s) is the group's reporting sources. </t>

            <t>Clarified the rules for when sources can be placed in the same
            reporting group.</t>

            <t>Clarified that mixers and translators need to pass reporting
            group SDES information if they are forwarding RR and SR traffic
            from members of a reporting group.</t>
          </list></t>
      </section>

      <section title="Changes From Draft -00">
        <t><list style="symbols">
            <t>Added the Reporting Group semantic to explicitly indicate which
            sources come from a single endpoint, rather than leaving it
            implicit.</t>

            <t>Specified that Reporting Group semantics (as they now are)
            apply to AVPF and XR, as well as to RR/SR report blocks.</t>

            <t>Added a description of the cascaded source-projecting mixer,
            along with a calculation of its RTCP overhead if reporting groups
            are not in use.</t>

            <t>Gave some guidance on how the flexibility of RTCP randomization
            allows some freedom in RTCP multiplexing.</t>

            <t>Clarified the language of several of the recommendations.</t>

            <t>Added an open issue discussing how avg_rtcp_size ought to be
            calculated for multiplexed RTCP.</t>

            <t>Added an open issue discussing how RTCP bandwidths are to be
            chosen for sessions where source bandwidths greatly differ.</t>
          </list></t>
      </section>
    </section>
  </back>
</rfc>

PAFTECH AB 2003-20262026-04-24 01:07:55