Buffer

A temporary storage area for data being transferred from one place in a system to another, or to another system. Buffers are often used in the context of computers reading from and writing to various disk drives, but can come in to play on most any type of data transfer. Buffers are needed because it often occurs that one or both of the devices cannot maintain an exact and synchronized data transfer rate. Buffers provide a place for data to sit while one of the devices catches up to the other. Cache (see WFTD archive Cache RAM) is a type of buffer.