RTP: Audio and Video for the Internet

Losses may also be recovered if the receivers send feedback to the sender, asking it to retransmit packets lost in transit. Retransmission is a natural approach to error correction, and it works well in some scenarios. It is, however, not without problems that can limit its applicability. Retransmission is not a part of standard RTP; however, an RTP profile is under development ⁴⁴ that provides an RTCP-based framework for retransmission requests and other immediate feedback.

RTCP as a Framework for Retransmission

Because RTP includes a feedback channel ”RTCP ”for reception reports and other data, it is natural to use that channel for retransmission requests too. Two steps are required: Packet formats need to be defined for retransmission requests, and the timing rules must be modified to allow immediate feedback.

PACKET FORMATS

The profile for retransmission-based feedback defines two additional RTCP packet types, representing positive and negative acknowledgments. The most common type is expected to be negative acknowledgments, reporting that a particular set of packets was lost. A positive acknowledgment reports that packets were correctly received.

The format of a negative acknowledgment (NACK) is shown in Figure 9.11. The NACK contains a packet identifier representing a lost packet, and a bitmap showing which of the following 16 packets were lost, with a value of 1 indicating loss. The sender should not assume that a receiver has received a packet just because the corresponding position in the bit mask is set to zero; all it knows is that the receiver has not reported the packet lost at this time. On receiving a NACK, the sender is expected to retransmit the packets marked as missing, although it is under no obligation to do so.

The format of a positive acknowledgment (ACK) is shown in Figure 9.12. The ACK contains a packet identifier representing a correctly received packet, and either a bitmap or a count of the following packets. If the R bit is set to 1, the final field is a count of the number of correctly received packets following the packet identifier. If the R bit is set to zero, the final field is a bitmap showing which of the following 15 packets were also received. The two options allow both long runs of ACKs with few losses (R = 1) and occasional ACKs interspersed with loss (R = 0) to be signaled efficiently .

The choice between ACK and NACK depends on the repair algorithm in use, and on the desired semantics. An ACK signals that some packets were received; the sender may assume others were lost. On the other hand, a NACK signals loss of some packets but provides no information about the rest (for example, a receiver may send a NACK when an important packet is lost but silently ignore the loss of unimportant data).

Feedback packets are sent as part of a compound RTCP packet, in the same way as all other RTCP packets. They are placed last in the compound packet, after the SR/RR and SDES items. (See Chapter 5, RTP Control Protocol, for a review of RTCP packet formats.)

TIMING RULES

The standard definition of RTCP has strict timing rules, which specify when a packet can be sent and limit the bandwidth consumption of RTCP. The retransmission profile modifies these rules to allow feedback packets to be sent earlier than normal, at the expense of delaying the following packet. The result is a short-term violation of the bandwidth limit, although the longer- term RTCP transmission rate remains the same. The modified timing rules can be summarized as follows :

• When no feedback messages need to be sent, RTCP packets are sent according to the standard timing rules, except that the 5-second minimum interval between RTCP reports is not enforced (the reduced minimum discussed in the section titled Reporting Interval in Chapter 5, RTP Control Protocol, should be used instead).

• If a receiver wants to send feedback before the regularly scheduled RTCP transmission time, it should wait for a short, random dither interval and check whether it has already seen a corresponding feedback message from another receiver. If so, it must refrain from sending and follow the regular RTCP schedule. If the receiver does not see a similar feedback message from any other receiver, and if it has not sent feedback during this reporting interval, it may send the feedback message as part of a compound RTCP packet.

• If feedback is sent, the next scheduled RTCP packet transmission time is reconsidered on the basis of twice the standard interval. The receiver may not send any more feedback until the reconsidered packet has been sent (that is, it may send a feedback packet once for each regular RTCP report).

The dither interval is chosen on the basis of the group size and the RTCP bandwidth. If the session has only two participants , the dither interval is set to zero; otherwise , it is set to half of the round-trip time between sender and receiver, multiplied by the number of members (if the round-trip time is unknown, it is set to half of the RTCP reporting interval).

The algorithm for choosing the dither interval allows each receiver to send feedback almost immediately for small sessions. As the number of receivers increases, the rate at which each can send retransmission requests is reduced, but the chance that another receiver will see the same loss and send the same feedback increases .

MODES OF OPERATION

The RTP retransmission profile allows feedback to be sent at a higher rate than standard RTCP, but it still imposes some limitations on allowable send times. Depending on the group size, bandwidth available, data rate, packet loss probability, and desired reporting granularity, an application will operate in one of three modes ”immediate, early, and regular ”which are illustrated in Figure 9.13.

In immediate feedback mode , there is sufficient bandwidth to send feedback for each event of interest. In early feedback mode , there is not enough bandwidth to provide feedback on all events, and the receiver has to report on a subset of the possible events. Performance is best in immediate mode. As an application moves into early feedback mode, it begins to rely on statistical sampling of the loss and gives only approximate feedback to the sender. The boundary between immediate and early modes, indicated by group size n in Figure 9.13, varies depending on the data rate, group size, and fraction of senders.

In both immediate and early modes, only NACK packets are allowed. If the session has only two participants, ACK mode can be used. In ACK mode, positive acknowledgments of each event are sent, providing more detailed feedback to the sender (for example, ACK mode might allow a video application to acknowledge each complete frame, enabling reference picture selection to operate efficiently). Again, the bandwidth limitations of the retransmission profile must be respected.

Applicability

The main factor that limits the applicability of retransmission is feedback delay. It takes at least one round-trip time for the retransmission request to reach the sender and for the retransmitted packet to reach the receiver. This delay can affect interactive applications because the time taken for a retransmission may exceed the acceptable delay bounds. For streaming, and other applications in which the delay bounds are less strict, retransmission can be effective. ⁶⁹

Retransmission allows a receiver to request repair of only those packets that are lost, and allows it to accept loss of some packets. The result can be very efficient repair, given the right circumstances. But retransmission becomes inefficient in certain cases, such as these:

• Each retransmission request uses some bandwidth. When the loss rate is low, the bandwidth used by the requests is low, but as losses become more common, the amount of bandwidth consumed by requests increases.

• If the group is large and many receivers see the same loss, they may all request retransmissions at once. Many requests use a lot of bandwidth, and the implosion of requests may overwhelm the sender.

• If the group is large and each receiver sees a different loss, the sender will have to retransmit most packets even though each receiver lost only a small fraction of the packets.

Retransmission works best when groups are small and the loss rate is relatively low. When the number of receivers, or the loss rate, increases, requesting retransmission of lost packets rapidly becomes inefficient. Eventually, a cutoff is reached beyond which the use of forward error correction is more effective.

For example, Handley has observed ¹²² multicast groups in which most packets are lost by at least one receiver. The result could be a retransmission request for almost every packet, which would require tremendous overhead. If forward error correction is used, each FEC packet repairs multiple losses, and the amount of repair data that has to be sent is much lower.

The retransmitted packet does not have to be identical to the original. This flexibility allows retransmission to be used in cases when it might otherwise be inefficient, because the sender can respond to requests by sending an FEC packet, rather than another copy of the original. ⁸⁵ The fact that the retransmitted and original packets do not have to be identical may also allow a single retransmission to repair many losses.