The real time protocol (RTP) is an internet protocol standard that specifies a way for programs to manage the real time transmission of multimedia data over either unicast or multicast network service. RTP is commonly used in internet telephony application RTP does not in itself guarantee real time delivery of multimedia.

RTP combines it’s data transport with a control protocol (RTCP) which makes it possible to monitor data delivery for large multicast networks, monitoring allows the receiver to detect if there is any packet loss and to compensate for any delay jitter. Both protocol work independently of the underlying transport layer and network layer.

RTP runs on top of the user datagram protocol (UDP) although it can use other transport protocols both the session initiation protocol (SIP) and H232 use RTP.