Flow Control

 

Flow control determines the actions of two or more packets attempting to use the same resource (a channel).

With cut-through routing two options available:

Virtual cut-through

• Blocked packet spooled into buffer.
• Behaviour of blocked packet similar to store-and-forward.
• Requires large buffer space.

Worm-hole routing

• Blocked packet left strung out over route.
• Requires small amount of buffer space in each switch.
• Increased probability of contention.

• Link Level Control Flow
• Contention
• ...