Voice and video streaming in wireless computer networks - evaluation of network delays

End-user mobility and multimedia streaming are current trends in Internet growth. Wireless technologies - besides of their constraints - need to meet user requirements and even forecast them. Nowadays, it is very common to watch live TV program on a cell phone or on a screen inside the bus. Websites that allow sharing of audio or video transmission are at the top of the bandwidth usage ranks. Taking under consideration those issues associated with mobile access, which is almost as efficient as wired connections, we get enormous amount of information, which is available everywhere around the world. In this paper, we compare wireless access technologies that are commonly available in Poland. The first group includes wireless LANs, that are still widely used as the “last mile” access links in rural environment or inside buildings. The second group contains cellular packet access technologies developing from GPRS up to HSPA+ nowadays. The authors present theoretically possible data transfers and compare them against results obtained by testing existing networks. Moreover, we evaluate jitter and average delay in wireless connections during streaming. Real networks evaluation shows that wireless networks generally allow streaming with no quality loss. However, a large gap is visible between first popular 3G standard - UMTS R99 and its enhancements - HSDPA and HSUPA. The newest available technologies and a future vision of LTE and 4G networks will allow every user to use mobile high definition streaming media anywhere.