152 Xing Distributed Media Architecture: Technical Description
Description
This article is from the MPEG FAQ, by Frank Gadegast phade@cs.tu-berlin.de with numerous contributions by others.
152 Xing Distributed Media Architecture: Technical Description
XDMA was developed as a client-server media distribution architecture
which can operate independently or complement existing WWW (World Wide
Web) HTTP / HTML architectures on local area networks, private data
wide area networks and public data wide area networks (e.g. Internet).
XDMA delivers *streaming* multimedia - pictures, video and sound -
based on the MPEG international standards for video and audio
compression from Unix and (in 3rd quarter 1995) Windows NT servers.
When integrated with WWW, XDMA augments existing WWW architectures by
providing a Common Gateway Interface (CGI) to existing Web (HTTP)
servers, and viewer extensions to popular "Web HTML browsers"
(i.e. Mosaic, Netscape, Winweb, Spyglass, etc). As such, XDMA can
take advantage of user authentication procedures as supported by
current Web browsers and HTTP servers.
Streaming of multimedia data is a significantly different way of
delivery, as the user can view / hear the data as it is being
transmitted instead of waiting for file transfer completion, and there
is no requirement for complex file systems such as Netware or NFS.
In addition, XDMA uses standard TCP-IP network protocols, and takes
advantage of new "multicast IP" protocols (RFC 1112) for data
delivery, allowing multiple users to simultaneously view / hear the
same data streams without duplication of data or use of intrusive
broadcast protocols.
A typical XDMA configuration will include some of the following components:
* XDMA Network Encoders
- video+audio
- audio only
- file transmitter / encoder emulator
* XDMA Network Servers
* XDMA Network Clients
- for PC Windows
- for X-Windows
- Standalone
* XDMA Network Routers
* XDMA Network Editors
* XDMA Network Manager
as described below.
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