it also means if you cant get the data fast enough but fill the buffer you will have holes in your bufferstream from missing packets the server can not throttle the streaming speed when it is realtime. like it for example can when streaming a moviefile, you can pause and let it buffer and still have a non-broken stream in the buffer, you can not do that with a fixed realtime stream. the contents of the buffer will still be broken because the speed is fixed and the net cant keep up.
its the same as if the stalker client had recording option you could pre-record a hour if you wanted to but the pre-recording will have missing parts and skip like hell if you have buffering in the first place.
apparently there is a 8 second post-demuxer cache you can tweak around if your bandwidth is fluctuating.
basically what fernetmenta says.
if they haven't forgot themselves. heh