Subject: RTSP Reference Code Version 0.1

From: Rob Lanphier <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1996 16:04:31 -0800

Progressive Networks is releasing Alpha 0.1 of the RTSP, which serves as a
reference implementation, in the C language, of the first draft RTSP
Specification. The specification will undoubtedly change in the next months,
but we felt that it would be useful to get some code working early on, so
that the development and standards community could start experimentation and
use the code as a testbed for ironing out issues and misunderstandings.

Freely downloadable source code is provided for both a client and a server
for the following platforms: Windows, SUN Solaris, Linux, and FreeBSD.  More
platforms will be added later, but the code should be readily portable to
other platforms.

You may download the reference from the following URL:
http://www.realaudio.com/prognet/rt/reference.html

Alpha 1 of the RTSP player and server have the following known limitations
and anomalies:

*  Server is configured by default as single use; once the client goes away,
so does the server.  However, the server can be configured as an inetd
client, which will cause it to behave more like a normal server.

*  Media support is still weak.  There are no audio format
descriptors/parameters being passed between the client and server to
describe content, it just gets sent.

*  Hard coded limit of 5 streams in player.

*  Server scheduler is very naive, meant only to provide minimal functionality.

*  All message types are encoded/decoded in server, but only a subset is
used in this reference implementation.

*  The state machines in both the client and server are not robust.

*  Compressed SCP/RTP headers are implemented but not used.

*  No demonstration of option negotiation.

*  No metafile format is defined.  A ".rtsp" file format is provided for
interfacing with web browsers, but we *definitely* plan on changing this
format, as it currently only contains an URL.

For updates on the status of this software, please visit our RTSP Resource
Center at http://www.realaudio.com/prognet/rt.  

This isn't officially supported software, but if you have any questions or
problems, we would appreciate it if you would send them to
"[email-masked]".   We strongly encourage you to send in patches
and enhancements to the software as well, which will help to make this a
useful tool for understanding the RTSP protocol.

---
Rob Lanphier               Voice: (206)674-2322         Fax: (206)674-2699
Program Manager-Protocols                         Email: [email-masked]
Progressive Networks-Home of RealAudio       Web: http://www.realaudio.com