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I am a php mysql developer ... just an (below) average. and i am interested in the way television and radio are broadcasted over internet live. i want to know how it works and and what are its requirements. i must admit that i am a complete layman but i expect it do by next half month or year or so.

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up vote 3 down vote accepted

there're a couple of network protocols for multimedia streaming. most popular atm are RTSP and RTMP. typically you need to setup streaming server that takes audio/video from some source and streams to all connected clients. popular streaming servers are Adobe Flash Media Server, Wowza Media Server and others.

Streaming is done over TCP or UDP, depending on your requirements. TCP guarantees that no packets are lost but they can be significantly delayed. This can be smoothed by large enough jitter buffer. Streaming over TCP is often used for one-way streaming from server to client when that delay can be tolerated. UDP is used for "live" streaming, especially in chat/conference, when you cannot tolerate several seconds delay.

RTSP is open standard. You can receive and play RTSP streaming by VLC player (free). RTSP provides a "media session setup" and goes over TCP. Actual streaming is done by RTP/RTCP protocols over UDP or "interleaved" with RTSP packets over TCP.

RTMP is proprietary protocol of Adobe.

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hood thanks for your interest in my question but can you please explain me how steaming server works please. I don't have a clue but only hunches (website is at webserver and i am sitting on my desktop and others are watching from desktop, if i am were to broadcast then do i need a software to connect to server? if so then what it might be?) – Santosh Linkha Jan 10 '11 at 11:42
streaming server takes audio/video from some source, e.g. from a camera, from a file or from another server (retransmitting). clients (video players on desktops) connect to the server, receive streaming configuration and streams, decode them and play. you need to setup some media server (I listed some alternatives) so your clients can connect to it and receive streaming. – Andy T Jan 10 '11 at 11:48

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