In computing, buffer underrun or buffer underflow is a state occurring when a buffer used to communicate between two devices or processes is fed with data at a lower speed than the data is being read from it. This requires the program or device reading from the buffer to pause its processing while the buffer refills. This can cause undesired and sometimes serious side effects, since the data being buffered is generally not suited to stop-start access of this kind.
The simplest guard against such problems is to increase the size of the buffer—if an incoming data stream needs to be read at 1 bit per second, a buffer of 10 bits would allow the connection to be blocked for up to 10 seconds before failing, whereas one of 60 bits would allow a blockage of up to a minute. However, this requires more memory to be available to the process or device, which can be expensive. It also assumes that the buffer starts full—requiring a potentially significant pause before the reading process begins—and that it will always be full unless the connection is currently blocked. This latter caveat means that if the data does not, on average, arrive significantly faster than it is needed, any "blockages" on the connection will be cumulative—so that "dropping" one bit every minute on our hypothetical connection would lead to the 60-bit buffer underrunning if the connection remained active for an hour.
Another way to protect against the problem, when using rewritable media (CD-RW, DVD-RW, DVD-RAM), is to use the UDF file system, which organizes data in smaller "packets", referenced by a single, updated address table, which can therefore be written in shorter bursts.