System and method for hardware based reassembly of a fragmented packet

A system and method for hardware based reassembly of a fragmented packet is shown. The method includes receiving a bandwidth request to transfer a data packet from the data provider (202). Then, bandwidth is allocated (204) to the data provider, where the allocated bandwidth is less than the requested bandwidth. Next, part of the data packet is received in the allocated bandwidth from the data provider, where the part of the data packet includes a fragment header, and the fragment header includes a sequence number for the part of the data packet (206, 208). The part of the data packet is then stored in external memory (210). Finally, the data packet is reassembled (214) by concatenating in the correct sequence the part of the data packet with other parts of the data packets to create the reassembled data packet.