Flow control: end-to-end mechanism for regulating traffic between source and destination Congestion control: Mechanism used by the network to limit congestion The two are not really separable, and I will refer to both as flow control In either case, both amount to mechanisms for limiting the amount of traffic entering the network Sometimes the load is more than the network can handle Eytan Modiano
A packet switch consists of a routing engine(table look-up), a switch scheduler, and a switch fabric. The routing engine looks-up the packet address in a routing table and determines which output port to send the packet. Packet is tagged with port number The switch uses the tag to send the packet to the proper output port Eytan Modiano