Patent ID: 7606928

Claim:
A method for adaptively controlling fullness level of a receiver buffer in a streaming client, the streaming client adapted to receive a sequence of packets from a streaming server through a communication link, said method comprising: selecting in the streaming client one of the packets in the sequence to be played out, the selected one packet having a scheduled playout time, wherein the receiver buffer is adapted for storing at least part of the sequence of packets; conveying through the communication link a message from the streaming client to the streaming server including information indicative of the scheduled playout time of the selected packet in the sequence to be played out; and determining in the server the fullness level of the receiver buffer at least partly based on the information for adjusting transmission characteristic in the streaming server, wherein the fullness level is computed based on a sequence number of the selected packet, a time difference between the scheduled playout time of the selected packet and a current time, and the sequence number of a last packet in the sequence to be played out.