How do you explain a buffer? If you were my grandmother, you would believe it to be some soft, fuzzy utensil used to polish something. “Bring me the buffer, I need to wax the car,” she would say. A computer programmer would find himself completely perplexed at such a request.
Like many normal words — boot, click, router, drive, and so on — the word buffer takes on a different meaning when you deal with high tech electronics. And like many of those words, buffer has several definitions.
Frequently you’ll see the word buffer used when it comes to waiting for something. A video is about to load, but you see the words “buffering.” I’m certain that casual users figure that “buffering” means something like, “I’m waiting an interminable length of time just to annoy you because you’re in a hurry, especially because the Internet seems all zippy-speedy in another window.” Something like that.
Actually, the term is improperly used in that instance. The real term should be spooling, which Grandma would take to mean gathering some type of thread-like substance up around a dowel.
Spooling does, in fact, involve a buffer. So I suppose the term is correct, although it’s one of those times a noun is forced into verb-hood.
A buffer is storage. It’s a chunk of memory set aside to hold information. It’s a scratch pad of sort. The memory won’t always be used to store the same information. Think of the buffer as a waiting room.
For example, when information is read from a storage device (or from the Internet), it’s usually stored in a given chunk of memory, a buffer. From there it’s manipulated or otherwise used, but then the next batch of information is read, overwriting the original batch. That’s the function of a buffer.
When you view streaming video on the Internet, such as on YouTube, information is read in chunks and stored in a buffer. The buffer doesn’t load the entire video, just enough to get you going. Then information is read from the buffer and displayed.
When you have a fast connection, the buffer is read, video displayed, then the buffer is quickly filled again. You don’t notice any stops and starts. When the connection is slow, however, you see the nasty pause when the buffer can’t be refilled fast enough.
I suppose if they called it spooling people may still be baffled as to what’s really happening. So I’m not going to vent extensively on this topic. Leave it so say that somewhere back in time, some programming nudnik decided to refer to the spooling process as “buffering.”
