Chapter 1-11. Introduction to Congestion in Storage Networks

Congestion Spreading

In lossless networks, to prevent a buffer overrun situation, a receiver applies backpressure to its directly connected neighbor. As a result, the neighbor reduces its transmission rate. But the neighbor’s buffers start filling up and to avoid its own buffer overrun, the neighbor applies backpressure to its upstream directly connected neighbor. This backpressure ultimately spreads to the traffic source, and it is an expected behavior. But, as a side effect, the flow control slows down all traffic that flows through the same path. This is because the flow control mechanisms in lossless networks do not have a flow-level scope. Hence, all traffic passing through the flow-controlled links is affected. This condition is like highways, where congestion between two cities affects all vehicles regardless of their source and destination. 在无损网络中，为防止缓冲区超限，接收器会对其直接连接的邻居施加反向压力。结果，邻居降低了传输速率。但是，邻居的缓冲区开始填满，为了避免自己的缓冲区超限，邻居向其上游直接连接的邻居施加反向压力。这种反向压力最终会扩散到流量源，这是一种预期行为。但是，作为副作用，流量控制会减慢流经同一路径的所有流量。这是因为无损网络中的流量控制机制没有流量级范围。因此，通过流量控制链路的所有流量都会受到影响。这种情况就像高速公路一样，两个城市之间的拥堵会影响到所有车辆，而不论其来源和目的地。

Figure 1-14 explains congestion spreading in lossless networks. Traffic flows from the two targets to the four hosts via the shown paths. When the link to Host-1 becomes congested, Switch-1 cannot transmit to Host-1 as fast as traffic is being delivered (received) for it. This leads to increased buffer utilization on Switch-1. To avoid buffer overrun, Switch-1 reduces the traffic rate from Switch-3 and Switch-4 by applying backpressure. Consequently, buffer utilization on Switch-3 and Switch-4 increases, and to avoid their own buffer overrun, they apply backpressure to Switch-5 and Switch-6. Finally, Switch-5 and Switch-6 apply backpressure to Target-1 and Target-2. In this condition, the effect of congestion is not only limited to its source (Host-1 link), but rather congestion has spread towards the traffic source via all the links that apply hop-by-hop flow control. This condition is called congestion spreading.