How Come, Does Anyone Know?

[Svejk]

If I'm listening to background music (youtube) on my laptop. Then I switch the dongle off/on to reboot it(i think) All the pages, AB etc. go blank because you're not connected to the internet but the music keeps playing?
Not complaining, I've just noticed this today and found it curious. Ta.

[Zacs-Master]

Buffering.

[Svejk]

I thought buffering was when, say, a video temporarily stops?

[Zacs-Master]

Are you running Firefox?

[Svejk]

I'm on google chrome at the moment but I do use firefox too.

[Zacs-Master]

Looks a bit technical
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=757262

[Svejk]

Without looking at the link yet. I'm guessing the music is 'processed' a couple of minutes ahead of where 'you are'.
If I left the dongle off for a couple/few minutes the music would stop.

[Svejk]

Soz, had to pop out.

[Hopkirk]

It's magic

[Svejk]

It is. Like I say, not complaining.

[hc4361]

Yep, the music you are streaming is 'gushed' to your pc so it is downloading faster than real time so it continues when you disconnect. Sometimes it slows down and real time catches up with the download then it buffers ....and it's off again.

[Old_Geezer]

If it only keeps playing for a bit that'd be buffering. The computer stores the music data for a while before playing it to you so that small duration Net problems don't effect the playing (because it's supposed to be downloading the music data faster than it plays it). If you switch the dongle back on again fast enough it can reestablish the Net link and just keep going.

(But if it continuously continues playing when the dongle is left off for a long time then it must be connecting to the Net some other way. Curious. Browser pages ought not blank unless they've needed to update. You imply yours are continuously downloading data.)

[Svejk]

Next time I have to turn the dongle off, I'll leave it off just to see how long the music keeps playing. I shall let you know how I get on. Thanks all.