how does audio-video streaming server work and it's requirements

I am a php mysql 开发者_如何学运维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.

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.