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 networks. 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. Second, multimedia requires transmitting large amounts of data over the network, and thus uses more of the network's bandwidth than basic network operations such as file transfer.