What it means
RTSP handles control: describe the stream, set it up, play, pause and tear it down. The video itself usually travels over RTP (Real-time Transport Protocol). The original RTSP specification is IETF RFC 2326, published in 1998, and RTSP 2.0 is RFC 7826, published in 2016. Most IP cameras expose an RTSP URL for each stream, often with a main high-resolution stream and a lower-resolution sub-stream.
How it applies in India
In Indian city and highway projects, the command centre, the video management system and third-party analytics often come from different suppliers, so tenders ask cameras to provide RTSP streams. Check which codecs are offered (H.264, H.265), how many simultaneous streams the camera supports, and whether the streams need authentication. On constrained links, an edge AI design sends events and clips, and opens a live RTSP stream only when an operator asks for it.