In this paper we present major technical requirements far designing and dev
eloping future distributed multimedia information system using Internet tec
hnology. The key requirements of this system are to allow users to search,
access, and communicate multimedia documents consisting of text, audio, vid
eo, and image. We emphasize the role of object oriented technology for info
rmation management and real-time communication protocols to guarantee QoS.
We pre sent a reference architecture for Web-based real time distributed mu
ltimedia system which provides several functionalities including real-time
streaming, multimedia indexing and searching, and distributed object manage
ment.