Patent ID: 6850999

Claim:
A method for enabling efficient resolution of data coherency in an intermediate network node, the method comprising the steps of: enqueuing packet data on a write buffer of a packet memory system in response to a write request to store the packet data on a service queue, the packet data interspersed among other packets of data from different service queues, wherein the packets are of differing sizes; tagging the write request in a coherency table having a plurality of entries, each coherency table entry containing a write address, a length of the packet data and a pointer that references a starting location of the packet data in the write buffer; issuing a read request for the packet data, the read request having a dequeue address and dequeue length; and performing a range comparison operation that interrogates the coherency table using the dequeue address and length to determine if the enqueued data can be used to service the read request.