Store and forward

Store and forward is a telecommunications technique in which information is sent to an intermediate station where it is kept and sent at a later time to the final destination or to another intermediate station. The intermediate station, or node in a networking context, verifies the integrity of the message before forwarding it. In general, this technique is used in networks with intermittent connectivity, especially in the wilderness or environments requiring high mobility. It may also be preferable in situations when there are long delays in transmission and error rates are variable and high, or if a direct, end-to-end connection is not available. Store and forward originates with delay-tolerant networks. No real-time services are available for these kinds of networks. Logistical Networking is a scalable form of store and forward networking that exposes network-embedded buffers on intermediate nodes and allows flexible creation of services by higher-level managers including caching, point-to-multipoint communication (or multicast), content delivery and many other stateful distributed services. Real time services can be created using logistical networking when data transfer connectivity permits. A store-and-forward switching center is a message switching center in which a message is accepted from the originating user, i.e., sender, when it is offered, held in a physical storage, and forwarded to the destination user, i.e., receiver, in accordance with the priority placed upon the message by the originating user and the availability of an outgoing channel. Store and forward switching centers are usually implemented in mobile service stations where the messages that are sent from the sender is first sent to these centers. If the destination address isn't available, then the center stores this message and tries sending it later. This improves the probability of the message to be delivered. In the other case, if the destination is available at that time, then the message is immediately sent.