Method and System for Effective Use of Internal and External Memory for Packet Buffering within a Network Device

A mechanism is provided to maximize utilization of internal memory for packet queuing in network devices, while providing an effective use of both internal and external memory to achieve high performance, high buffering scalability, and minimizing power utilization. Embodiments initially store packet data received by the network device in queues supported by an internal memory. If internal memory utilization crosses a predetermined threshold, a background task performs memory reclamation by determining those queued packets that should be targeted for transfer to an external memory. Those selected queued packets are transferred to external memory and the internal memory is freed. Once the internal memory consumption drops below a threshold, the reclamation task stops.