bufering

Buffering, often spelled bufering in informal usage, is the practice of collecting data in a temporary storage area called a buffer to accommodate timing differences between data production and data consumption. Buffers help systems sustain continuous operation when input and output rates are not constant, such as in media playback, file I/O, and network communication.

In multimedia streaming, a player downloads data ahead of playback and stores it in a buffer. Playback can start after a short startup buffer and continues until the buffer is depleted. If the incoming data rate drops or network latency increases, the buffer may run dry, causing rebuffering or pauses. The size and management of the buffer influence startup delay, smoothness, and latency.

In computing and networking, buffers exist at many points: in operating systems for I/O scheduling, in network stacks for packet queuing and jitter smoothing, and in storage subsystems for caching disk reads. Buffering can introduce latency (especially with large buffers, a phenomenon known as bufferbloat in networks) but reduces the impact of short-term rate fluctuations.

Techniques to optimize buffering include adaptive bitrate streaming, which adjusts data quality based on buffer occupancy and bandwidth; prefetching and larger initial buffers to reduce startup delays; content delivery networks and edge caching to bring data closer to users; and low-latency protocols and smaller data chunks to reduce rebuffering risk.