THINK I've got an idea to solve wi-fi problems, don't know enough to know why it won't work!

[ulrichburke]

Dear Anyone.

OK, I'm sure if this idea worked someone who knows more than me (not hard!) would've done it by now.

Here goes. There's wi-fi extenders and mesh systems - mine's a buffer box. Saw a video buffering and thought why not have a box that's a block of plug-in memory. You log into the buffer box, the router's sending signal to the buffer box so it's full of signal. OK, maybe a few seconds behind reality, but you'd be watching the signal from the buffer box, the router would be refilling the box with more signal, so you'd be using the Internet like a fully-buffered movie.

Wouldn't that be better than wi-fi extenders/mesh systems, a box full of buffered Internet you could just use as necessary? Of course if the memory got full because nobody was using it, it just wouldn't take any more in but when someone STARTED using it, it would refill automatically.

Why wouldn't that work?

Yours puzzledly,

Chris, who doesn't pretend to know as much as you guys, it's just this idea's been buzzing around in my brain for a couple of days now......

 

[aaronyuri]

This is the same concept of a CDN (content delivery network), except a CDN is a bit further up the chain.

The CDN is there to bring content as close as possible to end users. Have a read:

Content delivery network - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/cdn/what-is-a-cdn/

https://www.akamai.com/glossary/what-is-a-cdn

 

[mark 11:11]

i can see one massive draw back to this idea one thats only recently become a problem
the cost of memory is probably vastly more than the cost of having your own isp
you could literally buy/start your own isp cheaper than you could get 5 minutes worth
of memory buffer for at todays prices.

 

[radderfire]

Why wouldn't that work?

Packets of data transferred via TCP/IP have to get reassembled in real time, and decoded in real time. It is not a simple linear data transfer, so you can't simply save it in a buffered form.

 

[Steveocee]

Most media is UDP so you would struggle to add in a delay. Your PC wouldn’t ask for the next frames until it saw the first few so the requests would come as they were needed unless you mean adding your box as the source of content in which case…. That’s piracy. You’re downloading someone’s content and streaming it back out albeit a very short delay, it’s still downloading and restreaming and that’s before you factor in not delaying the menu options of say Netflix app.

Idea is ok, it’s a sticking plaster for a poor network though.