to that packet may be placed at the beginning of the data structure so that the pointer is accessed first when a new packet arrives for transportation by the communication channel a pointer for the packet is generated in pointer directory 901 after a packet is transported by the communication channel the pointer associated with that packet is erased fig1 depicts in some embodiments an example of the information stored in a pointer in this embodiment 8 byte pointer 1010 comprises 8 bytes as follows status 1 1011 and status 2 1012 are status bytes pointer byte 1 1013 pointer byte 2 1014 and pointer byte 3 1015 identify the beginning address of a packet stored in the shared memory and data length byte 1 1016 data length byte 2 1017 and data length byte 3 1018 are used to identify the length of the packet in some embodiments status 1 1011 and status 2 1012 are also used to identify the priority of the packet fig1 depicts in some embodiments the relationship between pointer directory 901 and shared memory 905 where a pointer in pointer directory 901 point to the beginning of packets stored in shared memory 905 since in some embodiments the amount of tdm traffic bytes to be carried over each frame cycle is known shared memory 905.