Functional dualism of local controllers with respect to congestion control and store-and-forward deadlock prevention in packet networks

The problem of functional dualism of local flow controllers used in packet networks is investigated. First a method for examining networks using local congestion controllers for exposure to store-and-forward deadlocks is presented. Then a simple analytical approach to performance evaluation of hop-dependent controllers is described that prevents store-and-forward deadlocks. Numerical examples show that in some cases typical local controllers are able to simultaneously perform both of the main flow control functions, i.e. deadlock prevention and congestion prevention.