Web Server / Streaming Server Comparison, Part I

Video Streaming Overview

Currently, video and audio content is delivered over the Web in two primary ways. The first, and older, method, involves using a normal web server to provide video or audio files to a media player. The second, and more recently developed, format, employs a dedicated streaming server, which has been specifically designed for the task of delivering audio and video media.

While there are some advantages to using a standard Web server (the two chief ones being cost and ease-of-use), there is no doubt that a specialized streaming media server is a far more powerful way of delivering media. In the end, the most important factor — the user’s experience — is vastly improved via the use of a streaming media server.

A Little History

Most of the time the Web has been in popular use (about 15 years, now), the only way to deliver audio and video on the Web was through downloading: the user would download an entire file to their computer, than play it back through a local media player. This greatly hampered the advent of audio and video on the Internet, since these files were inherently large, took a long time to download, and then provided a very short and unsatisfying user experience. Anyone who has been on the Web for a number of years remembers waiting half an hour to download a video-clip that would then only last 30 seconds!

However, in the last few years, the introduction of “streaming” video has changed all that. In streaming, when the user clicks on a file, it begins to play almost instantaneously; while the user is watching or listening to the file, it is being delivered “in the background” at the same time. As long as the media is delivered online faster than it is being played by the viewer’s media player, it provides a continuous experience for the user.

The development of a streaming process has created an explosion in the use of audio and video media over the Web. And, it has promoted the development of two different methods of streaming. One is the use of a standard Web server (such as those used to host the bulk of the sites on the Web), and the other involves a server which has been specifically tailored to the delivery of audio and video files.

Both methods have advantages and disadvantages, and in fact are in wide use throughout the online community. However, before evaluating which method is right for your purposes, it is first important to understand the details of how each of the processes works. To learn about it, go to the next article in the series:

Web Server / Streaming Server Comparison, Part 2

Video Streaming Overview