It's your streamer, not your modem

@jssmith - I could see lesser streamers with poor designs being more subject to upstream issues.  The writing into and the reading from the cache has to happen without the system tripping over itself, and then there is also decompression of FLAC, ALAC or mpx (mp3, mp4, etc) formats.  Writing non-blocking IO code for embedded systems really is an art form, so I could see a hastily put together system with limited CPU resources and very little stress testing performing exceptionally poorly, but my home router isn't going to make things much better.

To be clear, a Raspberry Pi 3 could do this really well, so this should not require server class hardware to do this.  It does require engineering attention.

@audphile1 Funny, you are the one trying to describe buffering and caching as two different things. 

@audphile1 - 

Let me help you.  Go to Wikipedia and look up "Transmission Control Protocol" and  then in there search for "flow control." I'd link it but A'gon's firewall is blocking URLs

You are confounding  "buffering" with "flow control."  There is almost no buffering at all in network devices between say Netflix and your TV.  None.  What there is, which you describe, is flow control, which limits the amount of data on the wire at any given time to prevent packets from being dropped.  This is entirely negotiated by the endpoints.  There are no mini-caches strategically placed around the Internet just in case your Internet provider is congested. 

Buffering is to use a cache for the sake of preventing interruptions via playback.  This is entirely an endpoint thing.

@8th-note 

I'm doing eveything wrong. I stream through my Asus ROG laptop computer which is connected to my network through wifi. I hook up the laptop to my Berkeley Alpha USB/Alpha Reference DAC Series 2 MQA, via cheap USB cable.

Well, certainly not wrong in my book! As a previous apartment dweller, I know how bad Wifi signals can be in a densely populated apartment building, but in a home with sparse neighbors it's perfectly serviceable.   There are always two things I worry about when using a PC or laptop as the source:

• Digital ground loops
• Power supply noise

If those two issues are mitigated I think they're perfectly fine.  One way to test for this with a laptop is to let your laptop discharge to around 50% and then plug your power supply into the AC. See if you hear any noticeable difference in playback quality.

To prevent these issues I keep any computers outside of the clean side of power conditioners and use a USB isolator.  The further away your PC is from the stereo, the more important a USB isolator becomes, as ground loops are more likely to occur.

Otherwise, I never bother getting very esoteric.

@bruce19 I see your point.

To be clear, I'm not advocating for a more expensive streamer, just streamers with better buffers, and honestly I have no idea who they are.  It's not a specification I often see published or mentioned in reviews.

Dollar for dollar, room treatment is much more important than an Ethernet switch. 

Is streamer A for $4,000 better than streamer B at $1,000 for managing Internet weather?  I have no idea. In many other areas I've seen exorbitant prices without any guarantee of better performance.  One example is galvanic isolation of USB ports.  It should be standard today but it isn't, even on expensive streamers. Sometimes they have it and sometimes they don't.

Thanks, @carlsbad2

I’m not saying it’s NEVER the Internet, at all. The performance of a lousy Internet with live streams ( hi Jazz FM 91 Toronto! ) is quite different. Last year it would run for like an hour before quitting. At the same time my browser would also stop responding. That was before I had Internet fail over.

My network provider has a multitude of ways it fails, and that’s why I’ve implemented a hot-fail over solution with ongoing monitoring.  Also, for whatever reason, about 2/3rds of the time when I have an Internet outage it requires a modem reset because it just won't come back on it's own.  Now, will this modem reset work, or am I going to have to wait 6 hours until it does?  I don't know, but that's what my automation is for.

I am saying that the overall quality of your devices in the home or looking for 1 Gig data plans isn’t going to help you.

and isolating all that gigital claptrap on the the non analog leg of the panel with at least a Furman grade power conditioner……

Paying attention to where your wall warts are is also important.  My network closet is on the opposite side of the house from my home theater and well isolated.