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1 Introduction

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This document specifies the Interactive Connectivity Establishment (ICE) Extensions. This protocol consists of a set of proprietary extensions to the ICE protocol. ICE specifies a protocol for setting up the audio/video Real-Time Transport Protocol (RTP) streams in a way that allows the streams to traverse Network Address Translators (NAT).

Signaling protocols, such as Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), are used to set up and negotiate audio/video sessions. As part of setting up and negotiating the session, signaling protocols carry the IP addresses and ports of the call participants that receive RTP streams. For this reason, the exchange of local IP addresses and ports might not be sufficient to establish connectivity. ICE uses protocols such as Simple Traversal of UDP through NAT (STUN) and Traversal Using Relay NAT (TURN) to establish and verify connectivity between two endpoints.

Sections 1.5, 1.8, 1.9, 2, and 3 of this specification are normative. All other sections and examples in this specification are informative.