Queueing comms packets

A general question here but what's the best way to queue packets of a fixed length? Is it best to use a FIFO with each entry corresponding to an address where the packet can be found? Or can I queue the whole packet on a FIFO - problem I can envisage here is knowing where the head of a packet is.

I'll be implementing this internally within a Cyclone III probably.

Thanks for any ideas.