A circulating first-in-first-out (FIFO) buffer with a downstream input and output, an upstream input and output, a circulating staging and staging marker and output marker storage with the same storage capacity; a circulating primary, begin marker, and end marker storage with the same storage capacity; and a control means where the primary, begin marker, and end marker storage are used to implement a circulating FIFO where the control means manages the transfer of data from the downstream input to the staging storage, manages the FIFO, enqueues the data from the staging storage to the FIFO, and dequeues data from the FIFO to upstream output; where the input is decoupled from the circulating FIFO; where the input is decoupled from the output; and where the circulating staging storage, circulating primary storage, and control means are all either analog electronic, digital electronic, or optical.