A streaming-protocol retransmission scheme without client-server clock synchronization

This letter considers an Internet streaming protocol (SP) for the transport of real time continuous data stream. SP makes use of measured network delay to optimally set retransmission time-outs and scale reliability. The sender streams out packets in a periodic manner, and a NACK is issued by the receiver if it does not receive an expected packet by a certain time. Although it may appear at first glance that the sender's and receiver's clocks must be synchronized, we prove that that the SP would work even if the clocks were not synchronized, a situation not uncommon in the Internet.