Managing the Flow of Information

As network speeds increase, the danger of congestion grows exponentially. Unit II focuses on the theoretical and practical aspects of traffic management, queuing analysis, and congestion control strategies that keep high-speed networks from collapsing under load.

Key Focus Areas:

1. Queuing Analysis: Mathematical models for predicting network performance.
2. Congestion Control: How to detect and react to buffer overflows.
3. Traffic Management: Proactive measures to ensure Quality of Service (QoS).
4. Internet Traffic Modeling: Understanding the "bursty" nature of real-world data.

The Congestion Problem:

Congestion occurs when the arrival rate of packets at a router or switch exceeds the departure rate for an extended period. This leads to buffer exhaustion, packet loss, and severe performance degradation.

Unit II Learning Objectives:

• Perform basic Queuing Analysis using the Single-Server Model.
• Identify the causes and effects of Network Congestion.
• Compare Reactive and Proactive congestion control strategies.
• Describe the Leaky Bucket and Token Bucket traffic shaping algorithms.
• Analyze the impact of Jitter and Latency on real-time applications.
• Understand the role of Admission Control in high-speed network stability.