Subject: Protocol Action: Compressing IP/UDP/RTP Headers for Low-Speed Serial Links to Proposed Standard

From: The IESG <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1998 09:02:17 -0500

The IESG has approved the Internet-Draft "Compressing IP/UDP/RTP Headers 
  for Low-Speed Serial Links" <draft-ietf-avt-crtp-05.txt> as a Proposed 
  Standard. This document is the product of the Audio/Video Transport 
  Working Group. The IESG contact persons are Scott Bradner and Vern Paxson.

Technical Summary
 
This documents defines a protocol for reducing the size of IP, UDP
and RTP packets sent over a serial link by compressing out header
information that is constant, changes rarely, or only changes by
small increments.  For small packets and slow links, the savings
in transmission time can be quite significant.

Working Group Summary

The proposed protocol received solid working group support for its
technical merits.  There was however controversy within the WG that
the protocol could not be deployed soon enough to meet the quickly
emerging needs of Internet Telephony and similar applications.  The
alternative was to specify an end-to-end compression of just the RTP header
that could be implemented in the applications themselves as an interim
solution until the link-level compression specified in this draft could be
deployed.  Considering that the gain of compressing RTP alone would be
relatively small and that it could not be standardized in the necessary
timeframe, the prevalent position was that AVT should not define such
an interim solution.

Protocol Quality

Vern Paxson reviewed the specification for the IESG. The protocol is
sound, thoroughly analyzed, and builds appropriately on the earlier
work of RFC 1144.