RTP, or Real-time Transport Protocol, is the network format commonly used to carry live audio and video over IP systems such as VoIP and conferencing. Unlike file transfer protocols, RTP is designed for continuous media delivery, so timing matters more than perfect completeness. A short delay can be tolerable, but jitter, packet loss, and reordering quickly degrade speech quality.
In cyber security, RTP matters because it is part of the media path attackers can target. Poorly secured voice traffic may be intercepted, replayed, or disrupted with denial-of-service techniques that overload the stream or introduce packet loss. Defenders monitor RTP quality to detect network abuse, misrouting, and broken media relays, and they often protect sessions with encryption such as SRTP. In practice, RTP health is a key indicator of whether a voice service is reliable, intelligible, and resistant to tampering.