Abstract. With the rising popularity of the real-time audio streaming
applications, it is important, in order to support (and to charge) properly these
new services, to understand and characterize the behaviour of these new
applications. This paper studies the traffic associated with a specific audio
streaming on-live service, the radio over the Internet, and presents some
analyses and comparisons of different streaming media products. In addition,
the user’s viewpoint is also taken into account, since it is ultimately the users
(and their degree of satisfaction) who will decide whether a service goes to be
or not successful. Finally, the study estimates the real bandwidth used by the
on-line radio and examines how a cable network based on DOCSIS, have to be
planned in order to be able to support this new service.