Resource management in communications systems

The management of memory resources is critical to the preservation of system integrity in a data communications system. The memory resources appear in various forms in a target system; examples include objects such as connection management data structures, data or control flow request descriptors, buffers and their descriptors. The critical part of resource management is to free-up or recycle the allocated memory resources when no longer needed with a scope that encompasses all user and system components in the target system. The challenge is to perform the resource management in a way that preserves the system integrity. This paper discusses resource management in an experimental communications system.