Data transmission in non-reliable networks

摘要

The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for transmitting video and/or audio data in a non-reliable and bandlimited network from a server to a client. The network may for instance be a wireless network. The data stream includes P-frames and I-frames. If during transmission a frame gets lost, the client notifies the server of the data loss when the next packet is received at the client correctly. The server then skips all the P-frames of the current P-frame sequence and continues the transmission with the next I-frame. Preferably, each packet has assigned a sequence number and the message from the client includes the sequence number of the currently received packet. The server may ignore a message from the client if the client's request for skipping the P-frames has already been executed. It is preferred to make use of the present invention for streaming MPEG data.