As others have mentioned "ranges" are put in the uri stem & query string for two reasons; evading mangling proxies and simpler access from browsers/clients. Fro

As others have mentioned "ranges" are put in the uri stem & query string for two reasons; evading mangling proxies and simpler access from browsers/clients. From memory notable implementarions are MPEG DASH, action script/flash, icecast, and various proprietary "services". The formats that send time ranges instead of bytes ranges are the worst. In that case the server/cdn has to retrieve & read the manifest, decode time indexes to fragments/chunks/ranges, and then return the appropriate byte stream to the player. This also means you cant cache based on the URI plus query string! Source: ive worked at both ISPs and CDNs supporting streaming content