Latency

RTP is, by design, extremely susceptible to media degradation due to packet latency. As such, any processing overhead from the embedding of message data into the cover-medium or delay due to inspection of potential cover-medium packets may have a noticeable impact on the end-user's quality of experience. When manipulating an RTP stream between two endpoints that are expecting packet delivery in a timely manner, a steganographic system cannot be overly invasive when packets are not needed for embedding and must be efficient at its task when they are.