Dear all,
RTP's specification mandates that the RTP ports, for a given source/destination, are "co-located" with the RTCP ports. This means the the report information about the RTP streams flow between the communicating endpoints. Although this mode of operation is intentional, it does make it difficult for 3rd parties to monitor the statistics as perceived by the endpoints. This can be particularly useful for network management where one would like to be able to monitor whether the network provides adequate quality.
On way to access the RTCP information would be to route all the RTCP traffic through some entity, but this also means that the RTP will have to follow the same path through the network. And this is not desirable.
For H.323 there would be the option to include the report packets in the "audio" element in the perCallInfo element in the IRR message. This would allow for a Gatekeeper to get a hold of these "vital" statistics.
Any views?
Regards,
Frank