Data communication and network-traffic control at the data link layer

Traffic control is an important function of the data link layer. It coordinates the number of data sent before receiving confirmation.

In most protocols, traffic control is a series of programs that tell the sender how much data it can transmit before the confirmation from the receiver, any receiving device has the speed limit for processing incoming data and the capacity limit for storing incoming data. The receiving device must be able to prompt the sending device before reaching these limits, and require the transmission device to send fewer frames or temporarily stop sending. The entered data must be checked and processed before it can be used. These processes are generally slower than the transmission speed. Therefore, each receiving device has a storage zone called a buffer zone that stores incoming data until they are processed. If the buffer is full, the receiver must be able to tell the sender to stop the transmission until it can receive it again.

Next, we will introduce the window mechanism when introducing the data link layer protocol, which is used for traffic control.