The four most critical and indispensable components involved in a multimedia networking system are: (1) data compression (source encoding) of multimedia data sources, e.g., speech, audio, image, and video; (2) quality of service (QoS) streaming architecture design issues for multimedia delivery over best-effort IP networks; (3) effective dissemination multimedia over heterogeneous IP wireless broadband networks, where the QoS is further degraded owing to the dynamic changes in end-to-end available bandwidth caused by wireless fading or shadowing and link adaptation; (4) effective digital rights management and adaptation schemes, which are needed to ensure proper intellectual property management and protection of networked multimedia content.