> I listen to a certain distant radio station on the Internet. I have a
> problem with the program cutting in and out and when it cuts out, the little
> dialog box says "Buffering"....after a little time I get the signal back and
> it will last for a while longer and then cut out again.
>
> What is going on? What is buffering? I am sure there must be some setting
> that I need to change to allow it to stream without interruptions.
A couple points that weren't explained in other replies-
sound is digitally represented in a way that requires a fixed
amount of data per second. I.e. 64 or 128kbits/sec. When playing
the data must be consumed at a fixed rate that depends on the rate
it was encoded at.
But ethernet and the internet are a multi-hop packet-switched network.
So there's not always enough room on some part of the network for your
64 kbits/sec. Maybe an intermediate node goes down and there's a delay
while switching, or some extra traffic clogs part of the path that your
packets are using.
So the program at the receiving end buffers data ahead of time in
case there's a shortfall (the water in the bucket analogy was good).
Only for you, sometimes the shortfall lasts longer than the buffer,
so the music cuts out.
One fix would be to increase the size of the buffer. This would mean
that it would take longer for the player program to start but it'd have
a bigger buffer so it could last longer when data flow is reduced.
Eric
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