You have too much network bandwidth!!

Correct! I use a 160mb/s network for 35 bucks a month. I stream movies flawlessly, I stream music flawlessly listening to flac, CD quality sound.

 It sounds just like the CD.  So the special network gear and high speed is not needed.

@erik_squires How about family members streaming video programming or any security camers in the house. With all the various ways to consume internet banddwidth, there's no such thing as too much bandwidth.

 How about family members streaming video programming or any security camers in the house. With all the various ways to consume internet banddwidth, there's no such thing as too much bandwidth.

1.  Don't take my post too literally.

2. Worth thinking about when readers wonder if they can improve their Qobuz/Tidal stream with 10 GigE switches. :) 

So many misconceptions  and ill drawn conclusions on this thread I dont know where to start. But I’ll lead with this:

"I’d just add that TCP requires every client to send a message back to the server for every packet they have successfully received.  Not an efficient use of the Internet nor server resources and the planet is suffering as a result." 

TCP/IP is an extraordinarily effective and efficient protocol for ensuring 100% accurate delivery of payload. It is most definitely NOT an inefficient use of internet or server resources (almost all packet processing is offloaded to the Ethernet  chipset, not the Server CPU, likewise router and switch chipsets are highly efficient packet processors) and absolutely is not causing planetary suffering. 

Next, buffering. First, buffering works. Buffering is necessary to eliminate the potential.impacts of jitter (variations in packet arrival time) by enabling packet re-ordering if packets arrive via different routes. The Internet would not function without it. Neither would your PC, laptop, or phone, as all their CPUs have multiple level instruction and data caches and buffers  (a cache is is a persistent buffer for frequently used or predicted instructions and data. - see ’pre-fetch cache’).

Companies like Akamai got their start, and have a core business of caching data and website components at multiple geographic locations closer to the consumer than the host server (known as edge computing) significantly improving website performance. The secret sauce of how they make this happen transparently is their intellectual property and their value-add. Thus their $12.5 Billion market cap. Akamai operates a massive, global network of over 365,000 servers in more than 135 countries. Not bad for an internal Internet component few people have ever heard of.

So, please, all you network purists, audiophile grade switch believers and galvanic isolator fans, read up a little about how the Internet actually works before pontificating on subjects with which you have little actual understanding. The reality of what we enjoy is far more impressive than criticisms based on specious claims.