A simple memory management system for packet buffers

Tradionally memory management has not been an issue in routers and switches: at the worst cases there have been only few queues sharing the same buffer memory. Thus even the crudest memory management schemes have been sufficient, e.g., fixed memory allocation. However, today's routers and switches may have to support 100s or 1000s of different queues. To have efficient memory usage in this situation, a dynamic memory management system is needed. A virtual memory system similar to those used in modern computers is one obvious solution. However, a simpler memory management system is needed for high-speed routers as the increased linerates challenge the performance of the fastest memory devices. The buffer memory management system proposed in this paper is extreamly simple but, nevertheless, reasonably efficient. Furthermore, it has some quite interesting features, which can be used in active queue management (AQM) operations. The memory fill efficiency of this system will be shown by testing it using real traffic traces from Internet.