A method and system for adaptively controlling level of a receiver buffer in a client in a multimedia streaming network. The multimedia streaming network has a server for providing streaming data to the client. The server is responsible for adapting the transmission rate to the reception rate or congestion control, and for adapting the sampling rate to the transmission rate. Thus, the server manages the shift and keeps it within the rate adaptation operating range. The client is responsible for compensating for the packet transfer delay variation, which is also known as network jitter. The client is also responsible for setting parameters of the server rate adaptation operating range. The client chooses and sends the shift parameters to the server, but it is up to the server to adapt its encoding rate or transmission rate when responding to the parameters.