Congestion Control

CONGESTION CONTROL
Congestion control refers to techniques and mechanisms that

can either prevent congestion, before it happens, or remove
congestion, after it has happened. In general, we can divide
congestion control mechanisms into two broad categories:
open-loop congestion control (prevention) and closed-loop
congestion control (removal) as shown in fig
Open-Loop Congestion Control

In open-loop congestion control, policies are applied to prevent
congestion before it happens. In these mechanisms, congestion
control is handled by either the source or the
destination. We give a brief list of policies that can prevent
congestion.
Retransmission Policy
Retransmission is sometimes unavoidable. If the sender feels
that a sent packet is lost or corrupted, the packet needs to be
retransmitted. Retransmission in general may
increase congestion in the network. However, a good
retransmission policy can prevent congestion. The
retransmission policy and the retransmission timers must be
designed
to optimize efficiency and at the same time prevent congestion.
For example, the retransmission policy used by TCP (explained
later) is designed to prevent or alleviate
congestion.
Window Policy
The type of window at the sender may also affect congestion.
The Selective Repeat window is better than the Go-Back-N
window for congestion control. In the Go-Back-N
window, when the timer for a packet times out, several packets
may be resent, although some may have arrived safe and sound
at the receiver. This duplication may make the
congestion worse. The Selective Repeat window, on the other
hand, tries to send the specific packets that have been lost or
corrupted.
Acknowledgment Policy
The acknowledgment policy imposed by the receiver may also
affect congestion. If the receiver does not acknowledge every
packet it receives, it may slow down the sender
and help prevent congestion. Several approaches are used in this
case. A receiver may send an acknowledgment only if it has a
packet to be sent or a special timer expires. A
receiver may decide to acknowledge only N packets at a time.
We need to know that the acknowledgments are also part of the
load in a network. Sending fewer acknowledgments
means imposing less load on the network.
Discarding Policy
A good discarding policy by the routers may prevent congestion
and at the same time may not harm the integrity of the
transmission. For example, in audio transmission, if
the policy is to discard less sensitive packets when congestion is
likely to happen, the quality of sound is still preserved and
congestion is prevented or alleviated.
Admission Policy
An admission policy, which is a quality-of-service mechanism,
can also prevent congestion in virtual-circuit networks. Switches
in a flow first check the resource requirement
of a flow before admitting it to the network. A router can deny
establishing a virtual circuit connection if there is congestion in
the network or if there is a possibility of future
congestion.
CONGESTION CONTROL
Closed-Loop Congestion Control
Closed-loop congestion control mechanisms try to alleviate
congestion after it happens.Several mechanisms have been used
by different protocols. We describe a few of
them here.
Backpressure
The technique of backpressure refers to a congestion control
mechanism in which a congested node stops receiving data from
the immediate upstream node or nodes. This
may cause the upstream node or nodes to become congested,
and they, in turn, reject data from their upstream nodes or nodes.
And so on. Backpressure is a node-to-node
congestion control that starts with a node and propagates, in the
opposite direction of data flow, to the source. The backpressure
technique can be applied only to virtual circuit
networks, in which each node knows the upstream node from
which a flow of data is corning. Figure 24.6 shows the idea of
backpressure.
Node III in the figure has more input data than it can handle. It
drops some packets in its input buffer and informs node II to
slow down. Node II, in turn, may be congested
because it is slowing down the output flow of data. If node II is
congested, it informs node I to slow down, which in turn may
create congestion. If so, node I informs the
source of data to slow down. This, in time, alleviates the
congestion. Note that the pressure on node III is moved
backward to the source to remove the congestion.
None of the virtual-circuit networks we studied in this book use
backpressure. It was, however, implemented in the first virtual-
circuit network, X.25. The technique
cannot be implemented in a datagram network because in this
type of network, a node (router) does not have the slightest
knowledge of the upstream router.
Choke Packet
A choke packet is a packet sent by a node to the source to
inform it of congestion. Note the difference between the
backpressure and choke packet methods. In backpressure,
the warning is from one node to its upstream node, although the
warning may eventually reach the source station. In the choke
packet method, the warning is from the
router, which has encountered congestion, to the source station
directly. The intermediate nodes through which the packet has
traveled are not warned. We have seen
an example of this type of control in ICMP. When a router in the
Internet is overwheh ned with IP datagrams, it may discard some
of them; but it informs the source
host, using a source quench ICMP message. The warning
message goes directly to the source station; the intermediate
routers, and does not take any action. Figure 24.7
shows the idea of a choke packet.
Implicit Signaling
In implicit signaling, there is no communication between the
congested node or nodesand the source. The source guesses that
there is a congestion somewhere in the network
from other symptoms. For example, when a source sends several
packets and there is no acknowledgment for a while, one
assumption is that the network is congested. The
delay in receiving an acknowledgment is interpreted as
congestion in the network; the source should slow down. We
will see this type of signaling when we discuss TCP
congestion control later in the chapter.
Explicit Signaling
The node that experiences congestion can explicitly send a
signal to the source or destination.The explicit signaling method,
however, is different from the choke packet
method. In the choke packet method, a separate packet is used
for this purpose; in the explicit signaling method, the signal is
included in the packets that carry data. Explicit
signaling, as we will see in Frame Relay congestion control, can
occur in either the forward or the backward direction.
Backward Signaling A bit can be set in a packet moving in the

direction opposite to the congestion. This bit can warn the
source that there is congestion and that it needs
to slow down to avoid the discarding of packets.
Forward Signaling A bit can be set in a packet moving in the

direction of the congestion. This bit can warn the destination
that there is congestion. The receiver in
this case can use policies, such as slowing down the
acknowledgments, to alleviate the congestion.

Congestion Control

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CONGESTION CONTROL

Congestion control refers to techniques and mechanisms that

Open-Loop Congestion Control

Backward Signaling A bit can be set in a packet moving in the

Forward Signaling A bit can be set in a packet moving in the

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