11. Summary

Video communication over packet networks has witnessed much progress in the past few years, from download-and-play to various adaptive techniques, and from direct use of networking infrastructure to the design and use of overlay architectures. Developments in algorithms and in computer, communication and network infrastructure technologies have continued to change the landscape of streaming media, each time simplifying some of the current challenges and spawning new applications and challenges. For example, the emergence of streaming media CDNs presents a variety of conceptually exciting and practically important opportunities to not only mitigate existing problems, but create new applications as well. The advent of high bandwidth wireless networking technologies calls for streaming media solutions that support not only wireless environments, but user mobility as well. Possible QoS support in the Internet, on the other hand, promises a more predictable channel for streaming media applications that may make low-bandwidth low-latency streaming over IP a reality. Therefore, we believe that video streaming will continue to be a compelling area for exploration, development, and deployment in the future.