Store and forward

Store and forward is a communications technique in which messages are sent to an intermediate station where they are kept and sent at a later time to the final destination or to another intermediate station. Reasons for using this method include:

• Origin and destination stations may not be available for communications at the same time
• One or more circuits may not have enough capacity for peak traffic and there is a need to give priority to certain messages, without losing the others.

See also: network switch