Flow control for real-time communication

ABSTRACT

Flow Control is a problem of resource allocation in communication systems; typically the critical resources are the bandwidth of the medium, memory space and processing capabilities.

Traditionally, protecting the resources of the communicating processes is called Flow Control, and the protecting the communication system is called Congestion Control. Hence, the flow control is the protection of one process from the other(s), and the congestion control is protection of the communication-system from the processes.

This note argues that real-time communication requires different flow control and congestion control schemes than the familiar ones used for non-real-time communication.