Meetod ja süsteem suunatud teabega reguleeritava voolmeediumi levitamiseks IP-v?rgus

The invention describes how a distributor offers to a content provider facilities to offer, transmit and provide streaming media to an end consumer. The distributor provides the facility of caching the transmitted material, at which the distributor attends to that the end consumer receives the material adapted to the wishes and needs of the end consumer. Distribution of streaming media in an IP-network is made according to an agreed policy between content provider and distributor, at which the by the content provider by IP-multicast transmitted media is cached in a cache system before forwarding to end consumer. The caching is controlled by the policy that has been drawn up between the content provider and the distributor. The invention aims at removing problems of insufficient bandwidth in the IP-network between content provider and the end consumer by a procedure according to which streaming media is cached in a cache system according to a defined policy, after which said streaming media is forwarded to, and at request of him/her, an end consumer. After an initial transmission from the content provider by IP-multicast, said streaming media can be transmitted to a plurality of cache systems, including a plurality of media caches, without the load on the network becoming absurdly high. An end consumer after that can have said media forwarded from the media cache that is closest to his/her user terminal in the network. In addition, the end consumer can request a media quality that is adapted to the bandwidth that exists between said media cache and the user terminal.