By some accounts, QuickTime has a larger installed base, and it gained ground faster than any other client last year. Delivering streams over the Internet Delivering quality multimedia over the Internet presents many challenges. Before streaming, audio and video clips had to be downloaded in their entirety before use. Streaming lets a media player start presenting content as it arrives, frame by frame. But datagrams get lost and arrive out of order.
Many players buffer frames to improve quality of the stream presented to the end user.
Streams are, by nature, bandwidth intensive. When many streams compete for resources over a highly variable and lossy medium like the Internet, client-side buffering is not enough. End users want VCR-like controls that pause, rewind, forward, and index into streams. Content providers who own media servers want the ability to authenticate and charge users for delivered streams. These real time transport protocols allow frames that arrive out of order to be reassembled with the intended timing and sequencing.