Multimedia on the Internet: Streaming Media

Multimedia on the Internet: Streaming Media

There's such a wide variety of applications for multimedia on the Internet that we're only just beginning to consider where and how we can use visualization and other sensory information. There are three major categories of multimedia on the Internet: communications applications (including VoIP, video telephony, and video and multimedia conferencing applications), computer applications (including interactive rich media, videomail, and streaming audio, video, and media content), and entertainment applications (including broadcast video, video-on-demand, and network games). This section concentrates on streaming media, and in Chapter 15, "The Broadband Home and HANs," we'll explore the fantastic future of smart devices and sensory networks.

Streaming Media Trends

Most streaming audio and video on the Internet today (for example, music, ads) is entertainment or consumer oriented. Many companies are now also beginning to use streaming media as a business tool. For example, I offer e-learning solutions on a streaming basis.

The appeal of streaming media is evident: Audio and video grab people's attention and can quickly present information that is easy to absorb and retain. Streaming media also allows for novel ways to reach clients, employees, and prospective customers. Audio and video are highly effective in sales and marketing, advertising, corporate communications, motivation, training, instruction, and customer support. Businesses realize gains in revenues and greater efficiencies and decreased costs for information delivery by turning to streaming media. By getting audio and video content in front of an audience, you can charm that audience, but it is costly and can be difficult. Downloading big files is time-consuming. Video file sizes run into the tens of megabytes, and a 5-minute video can be as large as 55MB. Audio files are often several megabytes.

Streaming is the solution to the problem of downloading large media files. Using a streaming media player, such as Apple's QuickTime, Microsoft's Windows Media Player, or RealNetworks's RealAudio and RealVideo, a user can play audio and/or video within seconds after the first bits of the stream hit the user's computer. These players support both live Internet broadcasts and video-on-demand, in which the streaming server keeps a copy of the content so that clients can request it at any time. Millions of people access some form of streaming content audio or video every day, and the number of streams available on the Internet is growing phenomenally. With all these people using streaming media and so many streaming media offerings available, streaming search technology is an emerging requirement in next-generation networks.

Streaming Media Applications

There are many applications for streaming media. Streaming media can be used as a novel way to reach and communicate with employees, clients, and partners. And streaming media is becoming more and more necessary where you need to respond to regulations that require a full disclosure or a method for informing a very wide audience. Another key application is virtual roadshows, such as pre-IPO presentations to potential investors. Product demonstrations are a very strong application of streaming media (for example, launches and rollouts of new products, virtual education and training). Some of the key customers for streaming media at this point are entertainment, financial institutions, health care, and education.

With streaming media, the content provider must digitize the content and set up a server that is specific to the client. The provider's total hardware and software costs are typically only in the thousands of dollars per streaming server. All the client needs is the player software, which is free or very inexpensive, and a sound card. Companies that offer Web hosting and streaming media services, however, need to make sure that they address network latencies, bandwidth management, digital rights management, billing systems, ad insertion, player licenses, and storage space. Again, we are in the early stages with streaming media, but it is certainly going to be a very important area.

Streaming Media on the Internet

Streaming media on the Internet today suffers because of restricted bandwidth (which makes the video jerky), poor reliability in the network (resulting in missing frames or dropouts in the audio), a lack of QoS in the network (which causes various types of distortions or artifacts in the video and audio), and packet loss at Internet peering points (ranging up to 40% during peak traffic hours, which is when key problems occur). These factors are being addressed, however; therefore, streaming media has great potential in the business realm.

Businesses have spent billions of dollars on streaming media, and they are expected to spend billions each year in the next several years. Businesses are seeking content conversion or capture, hardware and software infrastructure, network access and transport services, and other services, such as installation and support. Entertainment and consumer-oriented uses of streaming media are also huge. Streaming media is becoming fundamental to the way corporations, as well as individuals, communicate. Software and service providers are addressing three basic problems: delivery, performance monitoring, and content management.

Streaming Media Delivery

Edge caching has gained considerable momentum as a solution to the peering point problem. With edge caching, Web content is duplicated on a machine close to the end user the first time the user requests the content. Subsequent requests for this content, then, are satisfied from the nearby machine. This improves the speed and reliability of access because it avoids the Internet backbone and its peering points. Providers of edge caching include CacheFlow, InfoLibria, Inktomi, Network Appliance, and Novell.

In addition to edge caching, other techniques can be applied, such as hop-by-hop retransmission. This minimizes latency and increases the usefulness of retransmission for real-time broadcasts. With hop-by-hop retransmission, an intermediate device retransmits, so the retransmission travels a shorter path over a fewer number of hops and is therefore less delayed.

Application-layer multicasting is another technique. It ensures that just one stream goes across the backbone whenever possible. It is similar to IP multicasting, but it occurs at the application layer. FastForward Networks provides such solutions.

Streaming Media Performance Monitoring

Streaming content is vulnerable to fluctuations in bandwidth and QoS. The user's experience is closely correlated with metrics such as throughput, jitter, and dropped packets. Streaming applications require performance monitoring systems and services that track such measurements. Key providers in this realm include Mercury Interactive and WebHancer.

Streaming Media Content Management

Content management is another issue that is related to streaming media. Companies that regularly stream content need a system for making the content searchable and navigable by creating metadata that indexes it. Metadata is then stored on an application server, and the video is stored on a video server. Multimedia data search systems are automated software tools that analyze video, comparing each frame to known images and computing image similarity. They also create and index a voice-to-text transcription. Convera Corporation (which is a joint venture between Intel and Excalibur Technologies), Taalee, Virage, and WordWave are key providers of multimedia data search systems.

ISPs will look to offer new types of visually enabled services as a way to make up for reduced connection-fee revenue. Other organizations will look for ways to blend video with Web sites or portals, to improve the way they disseminate information, and to provide enhanced customer interaction. We can expect to see visually enabled call centers, visually enabled help desks, visual virtual meeting rooms, visual chat rooms, and visually enabled e-commerce.

Real-time interactive visual communications have been available for some time, but to date only niche markets (for example, distance learning, telemedicine, and corporate video conferencing) have seen their benefits and adopted their use.

Broadband Internet access with QoS is required for streaming media, and as it becomes more widely available in the near future, we will see many more adopters of this technology. Chapter 10 further discusses the demands of real-time visual streams and related QoS issues.

For more learning resources, quizzes, and discussion forums on concepts related to this chapter, see www.telecomessentials.com/learningcenter.

 



Telecommunications Essentials
Telecommunications Essentials: The Complete Global Source for Communications Fundamentals, Data Networking and the Internet, and Next-Generation Networks
ISBN: 0201760320
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 84

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