hot potato

Hot potato is a somewhat unusual method ofdata packet switching from the early days of data packet networks.

In the hot potato method, data packet transport works according to the store-and-forward method, i.e. data packets are first temporarily stored in the network nodes in so-called queues before they are passed on to the next network node.

According to the principle of getting rid of a hot potato as quickly as possible, newly arriving data packets are simply placed in the queue that still has the most free storage space, even if the destination direction is not correct at all. The data packet then reaches its destination via a different route. Although this procedure temporarily relieves the individual Interface Message Processor( IMP), it leads to unnecessarily high traffic density.