Efficient content distribution is vital to the publisher of streaming media. As early as 1997 codec development had reached a point where a reasonable video quality could be achieved at bit rates as low as 100 kbit/s, but the viewing experience did not live up to the potential offered by the codecs.
Watching a stream as it stalled and hiccupped led many of the potential adopters of video content to stick with animated vector graphics. The streaming infrastructure is shared with the general Internet, which offers only best-effort delivery. Streaming video often passes over 20 routers between the media server and the viewer. The routes switch as traffic varies, leading to varying latencies. If the network is ...