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There are several network protocols which make the video streaming available. These protocols are User Datagram Protocol (UDP), Real-time Streaming Protocol (RTSP) and the well known  Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), the IP Multicast etc. Their work is to send the media stream as a series of small packets. This method is very simple and efficient. Packets lost is possible but the user can use some error correction techniques to retrieve the data, may interpolate over the missing data, or may suffer a dropout.

The Real-time Streaming Protocol was designed to stream media over networks. The Transmission Control Protocol guarantee delivery for each packet in the media stream. This is accomplished by series of timeouts and retrieves but this makes them more complex to implement. This mean that if there is data lost over the network, the media stream stalls while the protocol handlers detect the loss and retransmit the missing data. The IP Multicast send only one copy of the media stream over the network connection,  along the path between any two network routers. This is very efficient but is more complex to implement. The main disadvantage here is that the most routers on the Internet  do not support IP Multicast and many firewalls block it. So this method is appropriate for big companies which support their own private networks.