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Congestion Control techniques

in Computer Networks
Congestion control refers to the techniques used to
control or prevent congestion. Congestion control
techniques can be broadly classified into two
categories:

Open Loop Congestion Control

Open loop congestion control policies are applied to

prevent congestion before it happens. The congestion
control is handled either by the source or the
destination.

Policies adopted by open loop congestion control

–

1. Retransmission Policy :
It is the policy in which retransmission of the
packets are taken care of. If the sender feels that a
sent packet is lost or corrupted, the packet needs
to be retransmitted. This transmission may
increase the congestion in the network.
To prevent congestion, retransmission timers must
be designed to prevent congestion and also able to
optimize efficiency.

2. Window Policy :
The type of window at the sender’s side may also
affect the congestion. Several packets in the Go-
back-n window are re-sent, although some packets
may be received successfully at the receiver side.
This duplication may increase the congestion in the
network and make it worse.
Therefore, Selective repeat window should be
adopted as it sends the specific packet that may
have been lost.

3. Discarding Policy :
A good discarding policy adopted by the routers is
that the routers may prevent congestion and at the
same time partially discard the corrupted or less
sensitive packages and also be able to maintain
the quality of a message.
In case of audio file transmission, routers can
discard less sensitive packets to prevent
congestion and also maintain the quality of the
audio file.

4. Acknowledgment Policy :
Since acknowledgements are also the part of the
load in the network, the acknowledgment policy
imposed by the receiver may also affect
congestion. Several approaches can be used to
prevent congestion related to acknowledgment.
The receiver should send acknowledgement for N
packets rather than sending acknowledgement for
a single packet. The receiver should send an
acknowledgment only if it has to send a packet or a
timer expires.

5. Admission Policy :
In admission policy a mechanism should be used to
prevent congestion. Switches in a flow should first
check the resource requirement of a network flow
before transmitting it further. If there is a chance of
a congestion or there is a congestion in the
network, router should deny establishing a virtual
network connection to prevent further congestion.

All the above policies are adopted to prevent

congestion before it happens in the network.

Closed Loop Congestion Control

Closed loop congestion control techniques are used

to treat or alleviate congestion after it happens.
Several techniques are used by different protocols;
some of them are:

1. Backpressure :
Backpressure is a technique in which a congested
node stops receiving packets from upstream node.
This may cause the upstream node or nodes to
become congested and reject receiving data from
above nodes. Backpressure is a node-to-node
congestion control technique that propagate in the
opposite direction of data flow. The backpressure
technique can be applied only to virtual circuit where
each node has information of its above upstream
node.

In above diagram the 3rd node is congested

and stops receiving packets as a result 2nd node may
be get congested due to slowing down of the output
data flow. Similarly 1st node may get congested and
inform the source to slow down.

2. Choke Packet Technique :

Choke packet technique is applicable to both virtual
networks as well as datagram subnets. A choke
packet is a packet sent by a node to the source to
inform it of congestion. Each router monitors its
resources and the utilization at each of its output
lines. Whenever the resource utilization exceeds the
threshold value which is set by the administrator, the
router directly sends a choke packet to the source
giving it a feedback to reduce the traffic. The
intermediate nodes through which the packets has
traveled are not warned about congestion.

3. Implicit Signaling :
In implicit signaling, there is no communication
between the congested nodes and the source. The
source guesses that there is congestion in a network.
For example when sender sends several packets and
there is no acknowledgment for a while, one
assumption is that there is a congestion.

4. Explicit Signaling :
In explicit signaling, if a node experiences congestion
it can explicitly sends a packet to the source or
destination to inform about congestion. The difference
between choke packet and explicit signaling is that
the signal is included in the packets that carry data
rather than creating a different packet as in case of
choke packet technique.
Explicit signaling can occur in either forward or
backward direction.

Forward Signaling : In forward signaling, a signal

is sent in the direction of the congestion. The
destination is warned about congestion. The
receiver in this case adopt policies to prevent
further congestion.
Backward Signaling : In backward signaling, a
signal is sent in the opposite direction of the
congestion. The source is warned about congestion
and it needs to slow down.

References :
nptel.ac.in
www.idc-online.com

Article Tags : Computer Networks GATE CS

Transport Layer

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