Bufferbloat is the undesirable latency that comes from a router or other network equipment buffering too much data. It is a huge drag on Internet performance created, ironically, by previous attempts to make it work better. The one-sentence summary is “Bloated buffers lead to network-crippling latency spikes.”
The bad news is that bufferbloat is everywhere, in more devices and programs than you can shake a stick at. The good news is, bufferbloat is now, after 4 years of research, development and deployment, relatively easy to fix. The even better news is that fixing it may solve a lot of the service problems now addressed by bandwidth caps and metering, making the Internet faster and less expensive for both users and providers.
An analysis of how to estimate the bandwidth loss of single vs. multiple-radio mesh nodes based on traffic.