MediaPlayer#8482; versus RealPlayer#8482;

Abstract

The performance of currently available streaming media products will play an important role in the network impact of streaming media. However, there are few empirical studies that analyze the network traffic characteristics and lnternet impact of current streaming media products. This paper presents analysis from an empirical study of the two dominant streaming multimedia products, RealNetworks RealPlayer™ and Microsoft MediaPlayer™. Utilizing two custom media player measurement tools, RealTracker and MediaTracker, we are able to gather application layer and network layer information about RcalPlayer and MediaPlayer for the same media under the same network conditions. Our analysis shows that RealPlayer and MediaPlayer have distinctly different behavior characteristics and exposes some of the impact of streaming media on the network and provides valuable information for building more realistic streaming media simulations.