Multimedia streaming

With the wide adoption of the Internet many companies are engaged in research and development of live Multimedia content distribution. Internet Service Providers could provide the video content distribution service to their clients using emerging standard protocols. The common approach is to set up a web server for resources index and to redirect the selected choice of media to the media server that actually delivers the media streams. The common problem is that the sophisticated interface and rich content are accessible only via centralized services, like www.broadcast.com [BCST], which suffers from huge traffic and can't offer reasonable quality of service. On the other hand, local ISP's operating on cable or DSL have the required bandwidth, but lack the developer and management resources to support the desired level of quality in interactive interface and rich dynamic contents. It seems that the first service that potentially have all the resources to combine the nationwide programming with the cable network's real-time stream guarantee is Excite@Home www.home.com [HOME].

The ECSL lab of SUNY at Stony Brook is working on research related to various aspects of multimedia streaming. The previously developed solutions include Stony Brook Video Server, the high-bandwidth video streaming server and and RETHER, the real-time Ethernet system. These two systems combine to provide guaranteed level of quality of service for media delivery. This work continues this research with the design and implementation of upper-level infrastructure for recording, distribution, indexing, providing convenient navigation and delivering to the end-user.