Currently, portions of the Internet, such as the M-Bone, use tunneling to pass Multicast signals through selected routers. This however, requires users to have connections to and from the M-Bone. Other systems appear to Multicast directly to consumers by using splitters, or servers that receive a stream on an IP address and retransmit to several other IP addresses. This is not technically Multicasting since each viewer receives an individual stream, but it does allow a broadcaster to push the same program to many viewers simultaneously. Client Configurations Internet consumers can have a variety of computers that may support video to varying degrees.
Configurations can be anything under the sun.
It is common for website designers to design for Internet Explorer, Netscape, Macintosh, and PCs all within the same webpage. Providing video to unknown clients is equally challenging. Sometimes automatic downloads of required software can be feasible, but this is often cumbersome and time consuming for the viewer. Special consideration must be made for each client. In corporate environments, however, the problem usually doesn't exist since the correct client software can easily be made available to all clients from the IT department.