RAT is a network audio tool that allows users to participate in audio
conferences over the internet. These can be between two participants
directly, or between a group of participants on a common multicast
group. No special features are required to use RAT in point-to-point
mode, but to use the multiparty conferencing facilities of RAT, all
participants must reside on a portion of the Internet which supports
IP multicast. RAT is based on IETF standards, using RTP above UDP/IP
as its transport protocol, and conforming to the RTP profile for audio
and video conference with minimal control.

RAT features sender based loss mitigation mechanisms and receiver
based audio repair techniques to compensate for packet loss, and load
adaption in response to host performance. It runs on a range of
platforms: FreeBSD, HP-UX, IRIX, Linux, NetBSD, Solaris, SunOS, and
Windows 95/NT. The source code is publicly available for porting to
other platforms and for modification by others.

Note that RAT does not perform call services like user location,
neither does it listen to session announcements to discover advertised
multicast sessions. For these purposes, it is recommended you use RAT
in conjunction with the Session Directory (SDR), or a similar
application.

Use of this software for commercial purposes is explicitly forbidden
unless prior written permission is obtained from the authors. For
details, see the full license ${PREFIX}/share/doc/rat/COPYRIGHT.