A New Transport Control Protocol Applied to Real-Time Multimedia Distance Learning

Face-to-face communication over the Internet and network links can enhance the experience of distance learning, but such links can be poor at handling real-time data. Network bottlenecks, variable delays and network congestion can lead to the multimedia data being severely degraded and ultimately unintelligible. It is desirable to manage the use of the network traffic so as to maximize the trade-off between real-time multimedia quality and appropriate use of bandwidth. We present a new technique for the transmission of real-time data, over the transport network layer, called the Real-Time Multimedia Transport Control Protocol (RTMTCP). The RTMTCP protocol uses feedback and priority weightings to determine whether packets should be sent over the network, and, if so, using which codec. RTMTCP is an improvement over the current Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) and the Real-Time Control Protocol (RTCP), offering at worst the same quality of service, bandwidth requirement and maximum number of calls.