When To Use Congestion Control?

Answer: Congestion control is used in computer networks when the volume of data traffic exceeds the capacity of the network, leading to congestion and degradation of performance. It’s employed to regulate the flow of data, prevent network collapse, and ensure fair access to network resources for all users.

Congestion control guarantees that all communicating nodes equitably share the available resources. It is important to use congestion control in the following situations:

• Network Stability: The moment networks get overloaded and start lagging, due to which packet loss and slow speed occur, networks turn out to be ineffective and productive. Congestion control attempts to keep the network operating reliably.
• Preventing Packet Loss: Congestion detection and response control strategies can immediately detect congestion and thus react before it results in packet losses. This, in turn, can hold a data chain and avoid re-transmissions.
• Improved User Experience: Congestion control aims to avoid the situation when routers experience traffic overload and consequently, users have a more comfortable, uninterrupted network.
• Maximizing Throughput: The congestion control mechanism serves the network to achieve capacity optimal data rate by adjusting the rate of data flow which in turn boosts the throughput and maintains network congestion.
• Avoiding Network Collapse: If the control of congestion is not there, then there is a possibility that network resources will become overwhelmed with data bits and eventually lead to network stoppage, where no data transmission can be done effectively.
• Compliance with Networking Standards: Most of today’s networking standards like TCP/IP are based on congestion control algorithms to keep the network running well and maintaining its efficiency. Within this frame, any similarities among the devices from different factories and networks will be provided.