Network data traffic buffering in mobile networks

A network device comprising:

• a control unit comprising processing circuitry configured to allocate, in response to a determination that a data path from the network device to a base station for a mobile device is not available, a hardware queue of a packet processor of the network device to the data path, wherein the allocated hardware queue is configured to disable packet scheduling;
• and
• a forwarding component with access to the hardware queue, wherein the forwarding component comprises processing circuitry configured to store data traffic for the mobile device to the allocated hardware queue,
• wherein the control unit is configured to, in response a determination that the data path is available, configure the forwarding component to output the data traffic from the allocated hardware queue to the base station along the data path.

A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium comprising instructions, that when executed by processing circuitry of a network device of a mobile network, cause the processing circuitry to:

• allocate, in response to a determination that a data path from the network device to a base station for a mobile device is not available, a hardware queue of a packet processor of the network device to the data path, wherein the allocated hardware queue is one of a plurality of hardware queues allocated for use as buffer queues and mapped to a loopback address of the packet processor of the network device;
• store data traffic for the mobile device to the allocated hardware queue;
• and
• output, in response to a determination that the data path is available, the data traffic from the allocated hardware queue to the base station along the data path.