Source Identification On Replay

When data is replayed by the server the receivers of this data observe that all packets come from one host. Many media tools have been designed to expect that each source comes from a different host. If multiple sources for each media are being replayed then all the sources seem to be one host, which can confuse some media tools. As there are some mechanisms available to overcome this problem other media tools are more tolerant.

There are currently two known approaches to this problem:

1.

in the vat protocol it is possible to add an IP address to the packet header to signify that the original source of the packet is not the sender but is that put in the packet.

2.

in the RTP protocol there is a field for a host independent channel identifier. This allows streams of media to be recognised by their channel id rather than their source address. As this data is in the packet it will be recorded and when replayed it will be used by the new receivers.

For problem free source identification on replay media tools need to be designed with media recording and playback in mind. Using RTP is a good approach for this as it allows host independent channel identification, however not all media tools are compliant with this mechanism.