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19 Congestion Control

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21 views6 pages

19 Congestion Control

19 comg

Uploaded by

sk1191853
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Congestion Control

As Internet can be considered as a Queue of packets, where transmitting nodes are constantly
adding packets and some of them (receiving nodes) are removing packets from the queue. So,
consider a situation where too many packets are present in this queue (or internet or a part of
internet), such that constantly transmitting nodes are pouring packets at a higher rate than
receiving nodes are removing them. This degrades the performance, and such a situation is
termed as Congestion. Main reason of congestion is more number of packets into the network
than it can handle. So, the objective of congestion control can be summarized as to maintain
the number of packets in the network below the level at which performance falls off
dramatically.
Congestion causes packet loss, packet loss causes retransmission of packet, retransmission of
packet cause congestion. So we can say congestion itself causes congestion.
Causes of Congestion
 Insufficient memory
 Slow processors
 Low-Bandwidth
 Bursty nature of traffic
 Congestion itself

Congestion affects two vital parameters of the network performance, namely throughput and
delay.

In simple terms, the throughput can be defined as the percentage utilization of the network
capacity.

The delay also increases with offered load.

Congestion Control Techniques

Congestion Control refers to techniques and mechanisms that can either prevent congestion,
before it happens, or remove congestion, after it has happened. Congestion control
mechanisms are divided into two categories, one category prevents the congestion from
happening and the other category removes congestion after it has taken place.

These two categories are:


i. Open loop
ii. Closed loop
Open Loop Congestion Control
 In this method, policies are used to prevent the congestion before it happens.
 Congestion control is handled either by the source or by the destination. The various
methods used for open loop congestion control are:
1. Retransmission Policy
 The sender retransmits a packet, if it feels that the packet it has sent is lost or
corrupted.
 However retransmission in general may increase the congestion in the network.
But we need to implement good retransmission policy to prevent congestion.
 The retransmission policy and the retransmission timers need to be designed to
optimize efficiency and at the same time prevent the congestion.
2. Window Policy
 To implement window policy, selective reject window method is used for
congestion control.
 Selective Reject method is preferred over Go-back-n window as in Go-back-n
method, when timer for a packet times out, several packets are resent, although
some may have arrived safely at the receiver. Thus, this duplication may make
congestion worse.
 Selective reject method sends only the specific lost or damaged packets.
3. Acknowledgement Policy
 The acknowledgement 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.
 Acknowledgments also add to the traffic load on the network. Thus, by sending
fewer acknowledgements we can reduce load on the network.
 To implement it, several approaches can be used:
o A receiver may send an acknowledgement only if it has a packet to be
sent.
o A receiver may send an acknowledgement when a timer expires.
o A receiver may also decide to acknowledge only N packets at a time.
4. Discarding Policy
 A router may discard less sensitive packets when congestion is likely to happen.
 Such a discarding policy may prevent congestion and at the same time may not
harm the integrity of the transmission.
5. 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.
Closed Loop Congestion Control
 Closed loop congestion control mechanisms try to remove the congestion after it
happens. The various methods used for closed loop congestion control are:
Backpressure
 Backpressure is a node-to-node congestion control that starts with a node and
propagates, in the opposite direction of data flow.
 The backpressure technique can be applied only to virtual circuit networks. In
such virtual circuit each node knows the upstream node from which a data flow
is coming.
 In this method of congestion control, the congested node stops receiving data
from the immediate upstream node or nodes.
 This may cause the upstream node on nodes to become congested, and they, in
turn, reject data from their upstream node or nodes.
Choke Packet
 In this method of congestion control, congested router or node sends a special
type of packet called choke packet to the source to inform it about the
congestion.
 Here, congested node does not inform its upstream node about the congestion
as in backpressure method.
 In choke packet method, congested node sends a warning directly to the source
station i.e. the intermediate nodes through which the packet has traveled are
not warned.

Implicit Signaling
 In implicit signaling, there is no communication between the congested node or
nodes and the source.
 The source guesses that there is congestion somewhere in the network when it
does not receive any acknowledgment. Therefore the delay in receiving an
acknowledgment is interpreted as congestion in the network.
 On sensing this congestion, the source slows down.
 This type of congestion control policy is used by TCP. BECN/FECN
Explicit Signaling - BECN/FECN
 In this method, the congested nodes explicitly send a signal to the source or
destination to inform about the congestion.
 Explicit signaling is different from the choke packet method. In choke packed
method, a separate packet is used for this purpose whereas in explicit signaling
method, the signal is included in the packets that carry data .
 Explicit signaling can occur in either the forward direction or the backward
direction .
 In backward signaling, a bit is set in a packet moving in the direction opposite to
the congestion. This bit warns the source about the congestion and informs the
source to slow down.
 In forward signaling, a bit is set in a packet moving in the direction of congestion.
This bit warns the destination about the congestion. The receiver in this case
uses policies such as slowing down the acknowledgements to remove the
congestion.

Congestion Control Algorithm

Leaky Bucket Algorithm


Consider a Bucket with a small hole at the bottom, whatever may be the rate of water pouring
into the bucket; the rate at which water comes out from that small hole is constant.

 When the host has to send a packet, the packet is thrown into the bucket.
 The bucket leaks at a constant rate, meaning the network interface transmits packets at
a constant rate.
 Bursty traffic is converted to a uniform traffic by the leaky bucket.
 In practice the bucket is a finite queue that outputs at a finite rate.

Token Bucket Algorithm

The leaky bucket algorithm described above, enforces a rigid pattern at the output stream,
irrespective of the pattern of the input. For many applications it is better to allow the output to
speed up somewhat when a larger burst arrives than to loose the data. Token Bucket algorithm
provides such a solution.

 In regular intervals tokens are thrown into the bucket.


 The bucket has a maximum capacity.
 If there is a ready packet, a token is removed from the bucket, and the packet is send.
 If there is no token in the bucket, the packet cannot be send.

Note:
The flow control is the point to point control mechanism that controls the traffic between a
sender and a receiver and prevents the receiver from being overwhelmed with the data
transmitted by faster transmitting sender. The congestion control is the mechanism that
controls the traffic on the network.

Q. Differentiate flow control and congestion control.

Dijkstra’s Shortest path

Socket={Protocol, IP, Port}

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