Simulation Based Analysis Of The Interaction Of End-To-End And Hop-By-Hop Flow Control Schemes In Packet Switching Lans

To meet the networking requirements of the newer high-bandwidth multimedia applications, many LAN managers are starting to adopt switches as the basis of their network architectures. However, although introducing switches makes the networks faster, they can also introduce some new problems. These are caused by the interaction of the existing end-to-end flow control in end systems with the hop-by-hop flow control that is used by switches. An example is a phenomenon known as head-of-line blocking. The paper illustrates how this can occur and, for an example topology, quantifies its effect using simulation modelling. Keywords: End-to-end and hop-by-hop flow control, TCP 1. Introduction An ever growing demand for more bandwidth is the driving force for the introduction of more efficient and faster network technologies [Ban91]. Switching technology [Hel97] has gained huge popularity over the last few years. Switches are in fact multiport bridges which offer much higher capacity compared t..