What Is Streaming?: Client Device

What is streaming?
The first websites were simple pages of text with maybe an image or two. Today, however,
anyone with a fast enough Internet connection can watch high-definition movies or make a
video call over the Internet. This is possible because of a technology called streaming.
Streaming is the continuous transmission of audio or video files from a server to a client. In
simpler terms, streaming is what happens when consumers watch TV or listen to podcasts on
Internet-connected devices. With streaming, the media file being played on the client
device is stored remotely, and is transmitted a few seconds at a time over the Internet.
What is the difference between streaming

and downloading?
Streaming is real-time, and it's more efficient than downloading media files. If a video file is
downloaded, a copy of the entire file is saved onto a device's hard drive, and the video cannot
play until the entire file finishes downloading. If it's streamed instead, the browser plays the
video without actually copying and saving it. The video loads a little bit at a time instead of
the entire file loading at once, and the information that the browser loads is not saved locally.
Think of the difference between a lake and a stream: Both contain water, and a stream may
contain just as much water as a lake; the difference is that with a stream, the water is not all
in the same place at the same time. A downloaded video file is more like a lake, in that it
takes up a lot of hard drive space (and it takes a long time to move a lake). Streaming video is
more like a stream or a river, in that the video's data is continuously, rapidly flowing to the
user's browser.
How does streaming work?

Just like other data that's sent over the Internet, audio and video data is broken down into data
packets. Each packet contains a small piece of the file, and an audio or video player in the
browser on the client device takes the flow of data packets and interprets them as video or
audio.
Does streaming use the User Datagram
Protocol (UDP) or the Transmission
Control Protocol (TCP)?
Some streaming methods use UDP, and some use TCP. UDP and TCP are
transport protocols, meaning they are used for moving packets of data across networks. Both
are used with the Internet Protocol (IP). TCP opens a dedicated connection before
transmitting data, and it ensures all data packets arrive in order. Unlike TCP, UDP does
neither of these things. As a result, TCP is more reliable, but transmitting data via UDP does
not take as long as it does via TCP, although some packets are lost along the way.
If TCP is like a package delivery service that requires the recipient to sign for the package,
then UDP is like a delivery service that leaves packages on the front porch without knocking
on the door to get a signature. The TCP delivery service loses fewer packages, but the UDP
delivery service is faster, because packages can get dropped off even if no one is home to
sign for them.
For streaming, in some cases speed is far more important than reliability. For instance, if
someone is in a video conference, they would prefer to interact with the other conference
attendees in real time than to sit and wait for every bit of data to be delivered. Therefore, a
few lost data packets is not a huge concern, and UDP should be used.
In other cases, reliability is more important for streaming. For instance, both HTTP live
streaming (HLS) and MPEG-DASH are streaming protocols that use TCP for transport.
Many video-on-demand services use TCP.
What is buffering?
Streaming media players load a few seconds of the stream ahead of time so that the video or
audio can continue playing if the connection is briefly interrupted. This is known
as buffering. Buffering ensures that videos can play smoothly and continuously. However,
over slow connections, or if a network has a great deal of latency, a video can take a long
time to buffer.
What factors slow down streaming?
On the network side:
 Network latency: A variety of factors impact latency, including where the content
that users are trying to access is stored.
 Network congestion: If too much data is sent through the network, this can
degrade streaming performance.
On the user side:
 WiFi problems: Restarting the LAN router, or switching to Ethernet instead of

WiFi, can help improve streaming performance.
 Slowly performing client devices: To play videos takes a good amount of

processing power. If the device streaming the video has a lot of other processes
running or is just slow in general, streaming performance can be impacted.
 Not enough bandwidth: For streaming video, home networks need about 4 Mbps
of bandwidth; for high-definition video, they will likely need more.
How can streaming be made faster?

Streaming is subject to the same kinds of delays and performance degradations as other kinds
of web content. Because the streamed content is stored elsewhere, hosting location makes a
big difference, as is the case with any type of content accessed over the Internet. If a user in
New York is trying to stream from a Netflix server in Los Gatos, the video content will have
to cross 3,000 miles in order to reach the user, and the video will have to spend a long time
buffering or may not even play at all. For this reason, Netflix and other streaming providers
make extensive use of distributed content delivery networks (CDN), which store content in
locations around the world that are much closer to users.
CDNs have a huge positive impact on streaming performance. Cloudflare Stream
Delivery leverages the Cloudflare CDN to store video content across all Cloudflare data
centers around the world; the result is reduced latency for short video startup times and
reduced buffering.

What Is Streaming?: Client Device

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What Is Streaming?: Client Device

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What is streaming?

What is the difference between streaming

How does streaming work?

On the user side:

 WiFi problems: Restarting the LAN router, or switching to Ethernet instead of

 Slowly performing client devices: To play videos takes a good amount of

How can streaming be made faster?

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