RTP Control Protocol (RTCP)

What Does RTP Control Protocol (RTCP) Mean?

RTP Control Protocol (RTCP) is a real time transport protocol (RTP) component of voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) communication.

RTCP’s basic operation and packet structure are specified by RFC 3550.

Techopedia Explains RTP Control Protocol (RTCP)

RTCP features are:

• Providing out-of-band statistics
• Managing RTP's flow information
• Following RTP’s model of multimedia data delivery and packaging

RTCP’s primary function is delivering quality of service (QoS) feedback for media distribution through recurrent statistical data transmission to streaming multimedia contributors. This includes exchanged octet, packet counts, lost packet counts, jitters and round-trip delays. However, RTCP does not exchange media streams.