Congestion avoidance is interconnected local area networks

The interconnection of dissimilar LANs and devices over a high-speed backbone network can create congestion at a destination LAN (output) gateway when more than one device or LAN attempts to simultaneously communicate with the same device or LAN. The authors address the issue of congestion avoidance in LANs interconnected by a high speed backbone. A congestion-avoidance scheme that requires input gateways to secure permits to the output gateway before transmitting is proposed. An implementation of the proposed congestion-avoidance scheme in an ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) switch is shown. Performance results indicate that packet dropping rates are greatly reduced