Transmission Time Offsets in RTP Streams
draft-ietf-avt-rtp-toffset-07

AVT                                                            D. Singer
Internet-Draft                                       Apple Computer Inc.
Intended status: Standards Track                             H. Desineni
Expires: September 12, 2008                                     Qualcomm
                                                          March 11, 2008

                Transmission Time offsets in RTP streams
                   draft-ietf-avt-rtp-toffset-07.txt

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   Copyright (C) The IETF Trust (2008).

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Abstract

   This document describes a method to inform RTP clients when RTP
   packets are transmitted at a time other than their 'nominal'
   transmission time.  It also provides a mechanism to provide improved
   inter-arrival jitter reports from the clients, that take into account
   the reported transmission times.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  3
   2.  Requirements notation  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
   3.  Transmission offset  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
   4.  Extended Jitter Reports  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
   5.  Signaling (setup) information  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
   6.  Security Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
   7.  IANA Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
   8.  RFC Editor Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
   9.  Acknowledgments  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
   10. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
   Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
   Intellectual Property and Copyright Statements . . . . . . . . . . 16

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1.  Introduction

   In the RTP specification [RFC3550] network jitter calculations are
   based on the presumption that packets are transmitted essentially in
   accordance with their RTP timestamps.  This must be true, of course,
   on average over longer time intervals, as the client is playing the
   packets out according to those timestamps.  However, for individual
   packets, this may under some circumstances not be true:

   o  When the data rate of the stream is bursty, such as with video
      where I-frames may be significantly larger than P or B frames,
      traffic smoothing may need to be applied to maintain an
      appropriate data rate.

   o  In video which has forward decode dependencies, frames may need to
      be transmitted in decoding order (the sequence number order) but
      with, of course, presentation timestamps.  Under these
      circumstances the transmission time of a frame sent early in
      sequence does not correspond to its RTP timestamp.

   o  When re-transmissions are sent, the re-transmitted packet clearly
      has a different actual transmission time from the original, even
      though they share the same timestamp.

   Under some circumstances it can help the receiver, or intermediate
   network elements, to know the actual transmission time of the packet.
   This RTP header extension element allows the communication of this
   information.

   The RTP specification does not define a transmission timestamp, and
   nor does this specification.  This specification merely provides
   information on the relationship between the relative transmission
   times and relative RTP timestamps.

   This specification allows the transmitter to indicate to the receiver
   any known variation between the spacing of transmission times and the
   spacing of RTP timestamps; any unreported variation introduced at or
   after the point of measurement of the transmission time will be
   treated as network jitter by the receiver.  The definition of the
   point where the transmission time is measured or defined is left to
   the transmitter, though it should, of course, be consistent from
   packet to packet.

   This information can also be of use to report the inter-arrival
   jitter caused by the network, excluding that introduced by the
   source.  A new RTCP packet is defined to enable this reporting.

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2.  Requirements notation

   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 [RFC2119].

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3.  Transmission offset

   Classically a pair of RTP packets with timestamps S2 and S1 are
   transmitted with a time interval between them of (S2 - S1).  This
   specification permits sending an offset value O in each packet, O1
   and O2.  One characteristic of these offsets is that the original
   transmission interval can be deduced to be (S2 + O2) - (S1 + O1).

   More precisely, the offset is defined as follows (with the function
   RtoN converting from RTP to NTP times, and NtoR doing the reverse):

   o  Take an RTP stream that has a recent RTCP sender report relating
      RTP timestamp S0 to NTP timestamp N0;

   o  consider a packet sent after that with RTP timestamp S1.
      Nominally this is sent at N1 = (N0 + RtoN(S1 - S0));

   o  If it was actually sent at a different time, Na, then the offset
      value O1 is O1 = NtoR(Na - N1).

   The transmission time is signalled to the receiver in-band using The
   IETF Generic RTP header extension [hdrext].  The payload of this
   extension (the transmitted value) is a 24-bit signed integer.  When
   added to the RTP timestamp of the packet, it represents the
   "effective" RTP transmission time of the packet, on the RTP
   timescale.  The reported transmission time T1 of a packet with
   timestamp S1 and an offset of O1, from the above equations, is T1 =
   S1+O1 (though of course the transmission time values only have
   meaning when two or more are compared).

   The form of the transmission offset extension block is as follows:

       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
      +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
      |  ID   | len=2 |              transmission offset              |
      +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

   The length field takes the value 2 to indicate that 3 bytes follow.

   The sign of the offset value depends greatly on the choice of the
   initial mapping of RTP to NTP times.  In general, without scanning a
   stream entirely it is not possible to ensure that this mapping would
   keep all the offsets positive; therefore this specification allows
   negative values.

   Imagine a stream with the following timestamps and sizes in bytes:

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   200   2kb
   300   4kb
   400   2kb
   500   12kb
   600   ...effective end of stream

   This has 20KB spread over 400 time units, i.e. on average 1 kb per 20
   time-units.  We traffic-smooth this, and establish that given a
   transmission time of x for the first packet, we would transmit the
   following packets at the given intervals later:

   x + 000  2kb
   x + 040  4kb
   x + 120  2kb
   x + 160  12kb
   x + 400 ...effective end of stream

   The choice of x is esssentially arbitrary: only relative values of
   timestamps matter.  Now, let's say I claim on the first packet that
   it went out *at* its RTP timestamp, i.e. with an offset of 0, i.e. x
   is 200.  Then the offset values are

   0
   -60
   -80
   -140

   This is because in this case, I traffic-smooth this because
   conceptually I think of sending the small packets 'early'.  But since
   only the relative values are significant, it is just as valid to say
   x is 400, whereupon the offset values are

   200
   140
   120
   60

   In a stream where this extension is not in effect (i.e. not declared
   or negotiated), the actual transmission offset is therefore unknown.
   However, when the extension is in effect for the stream, it MAY be
   omitted in those packets for which the offset is 0 (zero); that is,
   packets sent at their nominal time do not need this extension
   tagging.  Therefore the implied transmission time of an un-tagged RTP
   packet depends on whether the extension is in effect for the stream
   (and therefore the transmission offset is 0) or not (whereupon the
   transmission offset is unknown).

   The jitter calculations performed by an RTP client MUST NOT use these

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   transmission offsets.  In general, the sender (or intermediate
   network elements doing RTP analysis) cannot always know whether the
   offsets have been taken into account or not, and for consistency
   therefore, the jitter calculation should continue to operate on the
   'raw' reception times.  However, see the section on extended jitter
   reports, below.

   There are no extension attributes defined for this extension.

   It is structurally possible to have more than one extension of the
   same type in a packet.  However, this extension is only defined for
   the source to report, and intermediate network nodes that are not the
   source of the RTP session MUST NOT add this extension (whether or not
   it was previously present) and MUST NOT alter the existing
   transmission offset value in a packet, if the extension is already
   present.

   (Of course, it is clear that network elements that terminate an RTP
   flow, and are the source for a new RTP flow, can add a transmission
   offset extension header to the RTP packets of the new flow, if
   desired.)

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4.  Extended Jitter Reports

   The inter arrival jitter computed as defined in Sec 6.4.1 of RFC3550
   provides inter-arrival jitter reports which include any source-
   introduced jitter (transmission time offsets).  If it is desired to
   indicate the actual network jitter, excluding the source-introduced
   jitter, the new RTCP packet type defined here may be used.

   It has the following form:

        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
       +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
   hdr |V=2|P|    RC   |   PT=IJ=195   |             length            |
       +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
       |                      interarrival jitter                      |
       +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
       .                                                               .
       .                                                               .
       .                                                               .
       |                      interarrival jitter                      |
       +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

   If present, this RTCP packet must be placed after a receiver report
   (inside a compound RTCP packet), and MUST have the same value for RC
   as the receiver report.  The content is exactly that number of
   interarrival jitter calculations, calculated using the same formula
   as for sender and receiver reports, but taking into account the
   transmission offsets for the streams (if any); that is, using the
   values T1=S1+O1, T2 etc. as defined above, instead of S1, S2 etc..
   (If no transmission offset information is given for a stream, then
   the value of interarrival jitter in this packet and in the receiver
   report will be identical).

   Precisely, the replacement equation for the equation in the RTP
   specification is, where Rj is the most recent arrival time:

   D(i,j) = (Rj - Ri) - ((Sj + Oj) - (Si + Oi))
          = (Rj - (Sj + Oj)) - (Ri - (Si + Oi))

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5.  Signaling (setup) information

   The URI for declaring this header extension in an extmap attribute is
   "urn:ietf:params:rtp-hdrext:toffset".  There is no additional setup
   information needed for this extension (no extensionattributes).

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6.  Security Considerations

   The given transmission offsets are only informative and it is hard to
   see security considerations from associating them with media streams.

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7.  IANA Considerations

   The RTCP packet type used for the adjusted interarrival jitter needs
   to be registered, in accordance with section 15 of [RFC3550].  The
   abbreviation is "IJ", the full name is "Extended inter-arrival jitter
   report", the suggested value is 195, and the specification is this
   document.

   The name toffset needs to be registered into the rtp-hdrext section
   of the urn:ietf: namespace, referring to RFCxxxx.

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8.  RFC Editor Considerations

   The reference to an Internet Draft needs to be updated to the RFC
   when it is published (which should be before this draft).

   RFCxxxx in the IANA considerations needs to be updated with the
   number of this RFC.

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9.  Acknowledgments

   Ron Frederick, Colin Perkins, and Steve Casner all contributed
   substantially to this document, and their help and contributions
   helped turn an idea into a specification.

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10.  Normative References

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.

   [RFC3550]  Schulzrinne, H., Casner, S., Frederick, R., and V.
              Jacobson, "RTP: A Transport Protocol for Real-Time
              Applications", RFC 3550, STD 0064, July 2003.

   [hdrext]   Singer, D., "A general mechanism for RTP Header
              Extensions", ID draft-ietf-avt-rtp-hdrext-08,
              October 2006.

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Authors' Addresses

   David Singer
   Apple Computer Inc.
   1 Infinite Loop
   Cupertino, CA  95014
   US

   Phone: +1 408 996 1010
   Email: singer@apple.com

   Harikishan Desineni
   Qualcomm
   5775 Morehouse Drive
   San Diego, CA  92121
   US

   Phone: +1 858 845 8996
   Email: hd@qualcomm.com

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