====== Store and Forward (delay) ======

In a [[packet_switching|packet switched]] network, individual network segments are interconnected by [[packet_switch|packet switches]] (which are informally known as [[router|routers]]). These packet switches require that the whole packet is delivered by the incoming link before they can reliably access the packet's address information (which will be the circuit number for a [[virtual circuit]] or the destination [[IP address]] for a [[datagram network]]) in order to make a decision on which outgoing link to use for forwarding the packet to its destination. Thus the whole packet must be //stored// before it can be //forwarded// and this leads to a //store and forward delay//. The size of the delay may be reduced by breaking application messages into small packets.
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