A refined cut-through buffer management scheme for layered protocol stacks

Avoiding recopying of user data as it is passed between protocol layers helps break the protocol-execution bottleneck. The authors use a use a simple pointer-variable updating technique in the sending phase of their refined buffer cut-through scheme. Binary tree traversal is not required. Time is saved in allocating (and later deallocating) buffers for storing usually short data transfer protocol headers. Their scheme saves working buffer space for segmenting and linking of protocol data units. Because a simple linked list is constructed in the receiving phase, significant working buffer space can be saved. Each node of the linked list points to a user data segment. During the linked-list traversal, user data is copied directly to the user process when a node is visited.<>