Overview
Avoiding congestion before it occurs is a proactive approach to improving network performance. As a flow control mechanism, congestion avoidance:
Actively monitors network resources (such as queues and memory buffers).
Drops packets when congestion is expected to occur or deteriorate.
When dropping packets from a source end, congestion avoidance cooperates with the flow control mechanism at the source end to regulate the network traffic size. The combination of the local packet drop policy and the source-end flow control mechanism implements the following functions:
Maximizes throughput and network use efficiency.
Minimizes packet loss and delay.