The term streaming refers to a particular method of "playing" data received over a network. In a network environment, data sitting on a server is sent by the server across the network to a client machine, which then plays the data. With downloading, the entire data file is received by the client before the client begins to play the data. In the case of a video clip, the entire clip would be downloaded before being played. With streaming, the clip is played while it is being received. In other words, as the video clip is being sent across the network and received by the client one piece at a time, the client, "on the fly", takes those pieces of the clip and plays them immediately. Streaming is far superior to downloading in that the client does not have to wait for the download to complete in order to begin playing the clip, and the clip does not consume disk space. This is a turning point in the history of multimedia the web in that opens the door for unlimited-length content, such as live video broadcasts.

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