Real-time service discovery for the Internet

As the Internet continues to evolve, real-time audio and video enhanced services are beginning to be provided via this medium. In order to watch or hear a real-time service, a user must be able to somehow “find” or “discover” a service that is of interest. Most Internet users are probably familiar with searching for and retrieving pages of text and documents from the WWW. However, real-time service discovery is more complex than simple Web page searching as there are additional issues to consider, such as the time and location of the event and the technical capabilities required to receive the event data. This paper looks at the different approaches available for real-time service discovery and illustrates how users currently find out about audio and video enhanced events broadcast on the Internet