Other product and company names herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners. As personal computers have increased in power, that power has turned to running multimedia applications on the desktop. Now, multimedia applications are being designed for use on the network. Applications such as audio and video conferencing, and the transmission of live or recorded events using audio and video are only two of the many applications that blend multimedia and the network. Today's networks are designed to reliably transmit data such as files from point to point.
Multimedia places further demands on the network.
First, data such as audio cannot tolerate delays in delivery. A network whose basic task is to move files from one place to another can transmit data packets at an uneven rate. If portions of a file arrive slowly or out of order, that is not a problem. Multimedia requires that data packets arrive at the client on time and in the proper order. Real-time protocols and quality of service guarantees on the network address this issue.