Unix™ Systems Programming [Electronic resources] : Communication, Concurrency, and Threads نسخه متنی

Chapter 21. Project: Internet Radio

Broadcast, telephone and network technologies are converging rapidly, blurring the distinction between telephone and television. Software for video and telephone conferencing on the Internet is widely available, and most cable companies now offer high-speed Internet connections. Telephone companies have entered the entertainment business with video-on-demand and content services. The final resolution of these competing forces will probably be determined by politics and regulatory decisions as well as by technical merit. Whatever the outcome, more computers will handle voice, audio and video streams in addition to data. This chapter explores how well network communication protocols such as UDP, multicast and TCP support streaming media applications. The chapter outlines a project to send audio streams over a network under various conditions. The project explores timing, buffering and packet loss, as well as synchronization and a dynamic number of receivers.