1

CONGESTION CONTROL
TECHNIQUES

By: Er. Amit Mahajan

 H isto ry
2

In past few years, the congestion and its control has



been an area of interest where lots of developments

are there, due to three reasons:


1.The worldwide spread of internet has make it

unmanageable.
2.The transmission technology is developing
exponentially. As inventions in optical field has
made the hypothetical bitrates like Gbps and Tbps
manageable in real life.
3.In recent years, as the data communication field, the
telecommunication field has grownup very much,
and each service provider tries to give best
 What is Congestion
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Old definition of congestion says that:



Ø “A network is said to be congested if network is under

high load”


Now assume a case where short term packet arrival rate

increases the service rate, thus three things can happen
Ø Queuing delay of packets increases
Ø There may be packet loss
Ø Due to congestion traffic is dominated by retransmissions
So due to these 3 conditions a new definition of congestion

comes forward:
“A network is congested if due to overload condition X is

reached”, where X is queue delay, packet loss and

decreased throughput
 New definition of Congestion
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The recent researches in the field of congestion has given us a



new definition of congestion based on three points which

are:
1. A network can be congested from the perspective of one
user, and uncongested from the perspective of another.
2. A network can be said to be strictly uncongested if no user
perceives it to be congested.
3. A user’s utility may decrease due to something other than
network load, but the user may not be able to tell the
difference. The onus on the user is to determine the
cause of the loss of utility, and to take appropriate
corrective action.
4. d
 “A network is said to be congested from the perspective
 Causes of Congestion
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1.Insufficient queue(buffer) space in processing unit.

2.Processing speed not in accordance to data arrival
speed
3.Inefficient transmission media and techniques
4.Insufficient resources for bursty traffic


All the above reasons of congestion are interdependent



on each other. If we change statistics of one point

and don’t change other we will again stuck on
congestion. For e.g. if we change the buffer but not
the processing speed, or vice-versa we will again
suffer congestion.
 Causes of Congestion
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The congestion affects mainly two vital performance

parameters of a network namely ‘Delay’ and
‘Throughput’
Simply throughput is percentage utilization of network

capacity.


As the offered load increases nearly 60 %, the


 Congestion control
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Congestion control refers to the mechanisms and



techniques used to control congestion and keep the

traffic below the capacity of the network.
Ø Open loop: Protocols to prevent or avoid congestion,
ensuring that the system (or network under
consideration) never enters a Congested State.
Ø Close loop: Protocols that allow system to enter
congested state, detect it, and remove it. It involves
feedback to the central control unit or sometimes to
source or destination node of packet

 Fundamental requirements of a
congestion control scheme
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Ø
Ø
Ø Efficiency
Ø Ability to deal with heterogeneity
Ø Ability to deal with ill-behaved sources
Ø Stability
Ø Scalability
Ø Simplicity
Ø Fairness

 Fundamental requirements
contd.
9

Efficiency: Two aspects are



1.Congestion control technique doesn’t impose too much

overheads in network which result in more
congestion
2.It doesn’t let the network underutilized i.e. inefficient
control may throttle down the traffic even in no
congestion.


Heterogeneity: Congestion control scheme will be able



to
Ø Control large network
Ø Allow different packet sizes
Ø Support different protocols and services
 Fundamental requirements
contd.
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Deal with misbehaving source: Scheme must be able

deal with misbehaving sources which do not obey to
control scheme. Otherwise network has to suffer for it.
Stability: Delay in control signaling create instability in

the network. The congestion control scheme should be

able to stabilize this instability
Scalability: As the network grows with time, the control

scheme should mould itself to that situation

Simplicity: Simplicity is always an asset. The control

scheme should be simple to implement and use.

Fairness: There should be fair resource allocation

among the demands to the control scheme.

 Open loop Congestion
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Control
Slow Start


Ø Simplest pro-active technique to avoid congestion

Ø Initialization of connection is with small data packets
Ø As the acknowledgement of previous message is
received packet size go on increase
Ø This goes upto point when either full window size is
reached or congestion is detected
Ø When congestion start occurring, device decreases the
rate and data size.
 Leaky Bucket Algorithm
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Ø Act as a bucket with small hole

Ø As much water we put in, it comes
out at same rate
Ø Similarly leaky bucket takes bursty
data and sends it at constant
rate
Ø When host has packet to send, it
put in the bucket
Ø Bucket leaks at constant rate i.e.
transmits data at constant rate
Ø In practical case the bucket is
finite queue that outputs at
finite rate
 Token Bucket Algorithm
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Ø Leaky bucket describes the output rate

irrespective of the input
Ø In some applications it is needy to send
bursty data at output
Ø Token bucket is the appropriate algo. for
the purpose
Ø In this algo. the leaky bucket holds the
token, generated at regular interval
Few steps regarding its working are:

 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.
 Token bucket cont’d
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Ø Token bucket is less

restrictive than leaky
bucket in the sense of
bursty data
Ø The limit of burst is
restricted by the number
of tokens
Ø Just a variable in simple
program is used to count
tokens
Ø The counter is incremented
every t second
Ø The time counter takes to
count down is the time of
transmitting packets
Ø When counter is zero no
further packets are sent
 Closed loop techniques
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Ø A proper feedback technique

Ø Feedback contains information about congestion in
network, and if necessary slow down transmission


Steps of working:


1.Congestion Detection- Detection of congestion and

its proper place after or better, before it occurs.
2.Communication- Communicate to the sources
creating congestion, and their nearby nodes.
3.Decongestion- Solve the congestion if it has
occurred.
4.
 Choke Packet Technique
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Ø Can be applied to virtual circuit and datagram

approach
Ø A threshold level is defined by administrator
Ø Each router monitors its resources utilization at each
output
Ø Whenever utilization crosses threshold, output line
enters ‘warning’ position
Ø The router which monitors congestion generates
‘choke packets’ to source of congestion
Ø These packets are tagged, which means that other
routers will not have to send choke packets
Ø When host receives choke packets, it is required to
reduce traffic by some percentage
 Choke packets(example)
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§ Q depicts heavy flow and generate choke packets

§ P reduces flow by 50%
§ If further choke packet is received, P further reduces traffic by
25%
 and so on

 Load Shedding
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Ø One of the simplest closed loop technique

Ø When router depicts congestion, it simply start
dropping packets
Ø There are different methods to decide which packets
to drop
Ø One of the method is random selection
Ø Other methods need cooperation of sender and
receiver
Ø Another method is prioritizing the packets
Ø In priority case a priority policy is made and packets
are start dropping from lower priority until
congestionless state is reached
Backward Congestion Notification
(BCN)
19
The packet dropping is not the right solution for
congestion, because there are very much important
packets to be sent and received.
Ø The ultimate solution is Backward Congestion
Notification
Ø In the place of dropping, it “pauses” the data
transmission at sender side for some time
Ø When uncongested, route is unpaused
Two points are there

Congestion Point (CP): Point where congestion is

monitored and BCN packets are generated to source

Reaction Point (RP): A rate limiter that is on source

side, it reads BCN and slows down rate of data

 Case Study: Cisco SmartEdge
Router
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 For congestion management this router uses three methods


1. Random Early Detection

2. Queue Depth
3. Queue Rates


 There are further three queue management systems are used:

1. Priority queue (PQ)
2. Enhanced Deficit Round Robin(EDRR)
3. Asynchronous Transfer Mode Weighted Fair Queue(ATMWFQ)
 Case study cont’d
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Random Early Detection:



Ø Configured through PQ,

EDRR, ATMWFQ policies
Ø It monitors the average
queue size at every
instant of time
Ø It drops the packet based on
its statistical probability
Ø If buffer empty, all packets
are accepted
Ø As the queue grows, the
probability for dropping
packet grows too
Ø If the buffer is full, packet
received has dropping
probability 1 and packet is
dropped
 References
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 [1]-------http://techreports.lib.berkeley.edu/accessPages/CSD-91-649.html (Date-
18/02/09)
 [2]-------http://nptel.iitm.ac.in/courses/Webcourse-contents/IIT
%20Kharagpur/Computer%20networks/pdf/M7L5.pdf (Date-11/02/09)
 [3]-------http://www.cs.wfu.edu/~fulp/CSC343/jaincong.pdf
 [4]------ http://simula.stanford.edu/luyi/bcn.pdf on 13/02/09
 [5]-------ftp://ftp.ee.lbl.gov/papers/early.pdf
 [6]-------http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_early_detection on 2/07/09
 [7]--http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/net_mgmt/active
_network_abstraction/3.6.5/vne/refere nce/guide/chapRedbackdevices.html
