... of Internet providing streaming media and the main shortfalls of the protocols currently being used are discussed in this report. 2.0 Streaming Media Limitations Over Internet Due to the fact that Internet is a shared medium using Internet Protocol (IP) to provide a best effort delivery mechanism, it was never designed for real time streaming. The nature of the Internet and its use of IP means that a broadcast is competing with other data transmissions, and in general it is extremely difficult to guarantee a sufficient bandwidth to ensure an uninterrupted broadcast. There are several specific issues such as limited bandwidth, latency, congestion, packet loss, retransmission and out of order packet delivery that can affect real time streaming over the Internet [FRANC01] and [RYANM01]. Streaming data networks are used in time-critical communications, which can be characterised by very specific qualities of service such as: * Bandwidth determines the rate of delivery of data ...

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