Webcast Services -The Important Components
Webcast services have become more and more popular with the penetration of the Internet. Thanks to mobile phones that are Internet-enabled, you are now not even required to sit at a computer to access webcasting services. These are available to you, whenever you want through your cell phone. But how does this wonderful service work and what major components does it have that makes it possible for web casting services to bring you information and entertainment, as and when you demand them.
There are three basic components of webcast services without which webcasting services would not be able to deliver and display streaming media content to users spread all over the world through the Internet. These components are streaming media server, streaming protocol, and streaming client.
A streaming media server is the base of streaming services. It acts as a broadcast station from which webcast services are distributed over the entire Internet. A streaming media server is software, which acts in collaboration with other network infrastructure to enable people to connect to the webcast services provider and receive streaming media content. A streaming media server will encapsulate data properly into packets, which are then transmitted over the Internet. It is also the job of a streaming media server to re-encode files as per targeted bit rates. This means that webcast services can be delivered optimally to the end user, regardless of bandwidth constraints. The reencoding facility is subject to its provision by a webcaster. Playlist management is another job performed by the streaming media server, as part of a webcasting service.
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A streaming protocol is a set of rules according to which the data packets of webcasting services are encapsulated and transmitted over the Internet. There are a number of protocols which can be used for webcasting services such as Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP), User Datagram Protocol (UDP), Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP) and Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP). All these protocols, besides some others, operate at the application layer of the Open Systems Interconnection Basic Reference Model (OSIBRM), except UDP, which operates at the Transport Layer. While all these protocols can provide webcast streaming services, RTSP and RTP, which are specially designed for streaming purposes, are much more suited for this than HTTP and UDP.
A streaming client is generally a media player application that is installed on the user's device to allow him to watch streaming media content broadcast by a webcast services provider. The streaming client application interacts with the streaming media server deployed by the webcasting services provider, as per rules and guidelines defined in the streaming protocol. Thus, a streaming client's job is to enable the user to watch the streaming content that is delivered to it by the webcasting service. Streaming clients can also run as embedded plug-ins and can be operated from within a browser as well as from a dedicated streaming client.
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