Buffering

Buffering is the temporary storage of data in a buffer to accommodate differences in data production and consumption rates, or to absorb variability in data arrival times. Buffers are used across computing, networking, and multimedia to improve smoothness and efficiency. Common contexts include network traffic management, streaming video and audio, disk and memory I/O, and digital signal processing. A buffer can be in memory, on disk, or in hardware.

In many systems, a producer writes data into the buffer and a consumer reads from it. A circular or ring buffer is a common structure that allows continuous reuse of space. The size of the buffer determines latency and throughput: larger buffers can absorb longer variations but introduce more delay, while smaller buffers reduce latency but may lead to underflow and stalling if the data source is variable.

In streaming media, buffering involves preloading a portion of content before playback begins and sustaining a buffer during playback to compensate for network jitter. In storage systems, buffers between devices smooth out transfer rates, while in CPU and I/O subsystems, operating system and hardware buffers hide latency of slower devices.

Issues and optimization include bufferbloat, where excessive buffering increases latency, and buffer underrun, where insufficient data causes interruption. Techniques include adaptive bitrate streaming, dynamic buffer sizing, congestion control, and quality of service policies to balance latency, throughput, and reliability.