When using browsers as a client, nothing is installed or downloaded (no applets or ActiveX, but only pure HTML/JavaScript). Lightstreamer Server implements several mechanisms to optimize the data transmission on heterogeneous networks. It is possible to allocate a maximum bandwidth for each streaming channel, along with the use of Adaptive Streaming that detects any network congestion in order to dynamically throttle the data.

In version 3.1 the new StreamSense feature has been introduced for scenarios where a network infrastructure blocks any form of streaming to the client. With StreamSense each Lightstreamer Web Client can automatically detect if the streaming mode is unsupported and then switch to the Smart Polling mode. In this case (and only for those individual clients) periodic updating is used with a highly optimized AJAX like (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) approach.

Lightstreamer is currently used by banks and financial platform providers to deliver real-time market data to any type of client and many other applications are under development.