Abstract: A method and apparatus for transmitting a document across a network from a transmitting device to a receiving device reconstructs the document and stores the reconstructed document in a buffer. Specifically, the document is received from a packet based portion of the network as data packets. Data lines that comprise the document then are reconstructed from the received document data packets. The reconstructed data lines then are stored in the buffer, and retrieved at a substantially constant rate from the buffer as necessary. The reconstructed data lines then are transmitted to the receiving device across the network at about the substantially constant rate. The document then is transmitted from the transmitting device at the substantially constant rate.