The present invention teaches new solutions based on an alternative approach to controlling client behavior in adaptive streaming applications, namely, server managed adaptive streaming. in this approach, the client makes requests for streaming content and provides extra information about its behaviors, and the server verifies the information to determine if the requests can be granted. This way, even if the client is not trusted, its behaviors can be properly and effectively controlled. Moreover, all of the solutions resulting from adopting this server managed adaptive streaming approach fit into the MPEG/3GPP standards of Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH).