Yeah, for example, there are web services whose design goal is <30ms completed request so they can guarantee their client timely data based on a SLA. If this "real-time" project can't guarantee time of transactions, it's not "real-time".
How is this even possible? All it takes is a clogged router buffer 'somewhere' along your network path and that <30ms web request is gonna get blown away. Am I missing something here?
I'm probably just being ignorant lol. Can you point me to an example company offering a service like this?
I can't, but you could for example look at the financial services industry or providers of real-time data feeds.
In general these services are not available through the public internet so routers with clogged buffers are not usually an issue. But it depends on the SLA.