摘要 |
<p>The invention relates to a method for controlling overload in a packet-switched network, especially in a network where the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is used as the transport layer protocol. In order to inform the traffic source at a very early stage that the network is getting overloaded or congested, the transmission of acknowledgments traveling towards the source is only allowed if enough tokens are available. A token-based mechanism calculates the number of tokens on the basis of resource conditions such as a spare forward buffer capacity in a network node. Thereby, a threshold for a buffer occupancy or a rate for delaying the acknowledgments do not have to be determined. The acknowledgments are constrained closely related to the current network resource and not to the characterization of the data traffic. As a result, the overload control is significantly robust.</p> |