Real Time Streaming Protocol

The Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP), developed by the IETF and created in 1998 as RFC 2326, is a protocol for use in streaming media systems, which allows a client to remotely control a streaming media server, issuing VCR-like commands such as "play" and "pause", and allowing time-based access to files on a server.

The sending of streaming data itself is not part of the RTSP protocol. Most RTSP servers use the standards-based RTP as the transport protocol for the actual audio/video data. The RTSP server from RealNetworks also features RealNetworks' proprietary RDT as the transport protocol.

Clients
 GStreamer
 Media Player Classic
 MPEG4IP 
 MPlayer
 QuickTime
 Avi player 
 RealPlayer
 Skype
 VLC media player
 Winamp
 Windows Media Player
 Xine
 MythTV via Freebox
 Gom player 

Server software
 QuickTime Streaming Server: Apple's closed-source streaming server that ships with Mac OS X Server
 Darwin Streaming Server: Open-sourced version of Quicktime Streaming Server maintained by Apple
 pvServer: Formerly called PacketVideo Streaming Server, this is Alcatel-Lucent's streaming server product.
 Helix DNA Server: RealNetworks' streaming server. Comes in both open-source and proprietary flavors.
 Live555: Open source C++ server and client libraries used in well known clients like VLC and mplayer.
 VideoLAN: Open source media player and streaming server
 Windows Media Services: Microsoft's streaming server included with Windows Server.
 VX30: Streaming video server and embedded JAVA client from Maui X-Stream.

Related pages
 Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP)
 Fusion RTSP solution for embedded systems, e.g. IPTV, internet TV and mobile internet devices.

Other websites
 RTSP.org , a central information repository about RTSP. 
 Tunneling RTSP and RTP Over HTTP  A standard solution to help RTSP work through firewalls and web proxies

Category:Application layer protocols