1. Introduction

At the time the Real-Time Transport Protocol (RTP) [RFC3550] was originally designed, and for quite some time after, endpoints in RTP sessions typically only transmitted a single media source and, thus, used a single RTP stream and synchronization source (SSRC) per RTP session, where separate RTP sessions were typically used for each distinct media type. Recently, however, a number of scenarios have emerged in which endpoints wish to send multiple RTP streams, distinguished by distinct RTP synchronization source (SSRC) identifiers, in a single RTP session. These are outlined in Section 3. Although the initial design of RTP did consider such scenarios, the specification was not consistently written with such use cases in mind; thus, the specification is somewhat unclear in places.

This memo updates [RFC3550] to clarify behavior in use cases where endpoints use multiple SSRCs. It also updates [RFC4585] to resolve problems with regard to timeout of inactive SSRCs and to clarify behavior around inclusion of feedback messages.