Congestion avoidance in computer networks with a connectionless network layer: concepts, goals and methodology

The authors compare the concept of congestion with that of flow control and congestion control. A number of possible alternatives for congestion avoidance are identified. From these a few are selected for study. The criteria for selection and goals for these schemes are described. In particular, the authors wanted the scheme to be globally efficient, fair, dynamic, convergent, robust, distributed, configuration-independent, etc. They model the network and the user policies for congestion avoidance as a feedback control system. The key components of a generic congestion-avoidance scheme are congestion detection, congestion feedback, feedback selector, signal filter, decision function, and increase/decrease algorithms.<>