Real Time Streaming Protocol (STSP)

In Our daily life we all regularly use internet. We mostly come across 2 types of transfer Protocol with which every one of us are familiar i.e. HTTP(Hyper Text Transfer Protocol) used as Http://www.domain.com and FTPused as ftp://59.542.120.124.

I would like to give you some information about a new protocol known as RTSP (Real Time Streaming Protocol)used as rtsp ://_____.

You all would have used YouTube and other video hosts to watch your favorite videos, but ever wondered how these video files hosted on servers are controlled. They work according to your need; you can play, pause, stop, or rewind it etc…Which is not possible with a normal http:// or ftp: // protocol. these were some common controls which are used by you, all these command you give are controlled by RTSP

RTSP (Real Time Streaming Protocol)developed by “Columbia University”,” Netscape” (the famous web browser) “Real Networks”(the company which made ‘real player’) and created in 1998 as RFC 2326,is a protocol for use in streaming media systems which allows a client to remotely control a streaming media server, issuing VCR-like commands such as “play” and “pause”, and allowing time-based (forward or rewind the video as audio file) access to files on a server. RTSPuses RTP (Real-Time Transport Protocol) to format packets of multimedia content. RTSP is designed to efficiently broadcast audio-visual data to large groups.

The protocols support the following operations:

* Retrieval of media from media server: The client can request a presentation description via HTTP or some other method.

* Invitation of a media server to a conference: A media server can be “invited” to join an existing conference, either to play back media in a presentation.

* Addition to media to an exiting presentation: Particularly for live presentations, it is useful if the server can tell the client about additional media becoming available.

Suresh Gavel