In
computer networking
A computer network is a collection of communicating computers and other devices, such as printers and smart phones. In order to communicate, the computers and devices must be connected by wired media like copper cables, optical fibers, or b ...
, network traffic control is the process of managing, controlling or reducing the network traffic, particularly Internet
bandwidth, e.g. by the
network scheduler.
[M. Noormohammadpour, C. S. Raghavendra]
"Datacenter Traffic Control: Understanding Techniques and Trade-offs,"
IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, vol. PP, no. 99, pp. 1-1. It is used by network administrators, to reduce
congestion,
latency and
packet loss
Packet loss occurs when one or more packets of data travelling across a computer network fail to reach their destination. Packet loss is either caused by errors in data transmission, typically across wireless networks, or network congestion.Ku ...
. This is part of
bandwidth management
Bandwidth management is the process of measuring and controlling the communications (traffic, packets) on a network link, to avoid filling the link to capacity or overfilling the link,https://www.internetsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/BWro ...
. In order to use these tools effectively, it is necessary to
measure the network traffic to determine the causes of network congestion and attack those problems specifically.
Network traffic control is an important subject in
datacenters as it is necessary for efficient use of
datacenter network bandwidth and for maintaining service level agreements.
[
]
Traffic shaping
Traffic shaping is the retiming (delaying) of packets (or frames) until they meet specified bandwidth and or burstiness limits.[ Since such delays involve queues that are nearly always finite and, once full, excess traffic is nearly always dropped (discarded), traffic shaping nearly always implies traffic policing as well.
]
Traffic policing
Traffic policing is the dropping (discarding) or reduction in priority (demoting) of packets (or frames) that exceed some specified bandwidth and or burstiness limit.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Network Traffic Control
Network performance