Round-robin scheduling

The name of the algorithm comes from the round-robin principle known from other fields, where each person takes an equal share of something in turn.

In best-effort packet switching and other statistical multiplexing, round-robin scheduling can be used as an alternative to first-come first-served queuing.

In multiple-access networks, where several terminals are connected to a shared physical medium, round-robin scheduling may be provided by token passing channel access schemes such as Token Ring, or by polling or resource reservation from a central control station.

However, if link adaptation is used, it will take a much longer time to transmit a certain amount of data to "expensive" users than to others since the channel conditions differ.

It would be more efficient to wait with the transmission until the channel conditions are improved, or at least to give scheduling priority to less expensive users.

This type of scheduling is one of the very basic algorithms for Operating Systems in computers which can be implemented through a circular queue data structure.