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CompTIA Network+ 1.4 Cisco CCNA 1.5
InteractiveNetworkFree

Flow Control or Congestion Control?

Is each TCP slowdown flow control or congestion control? Get five in a row.

⚑ Complete this interactive to capture a CTF flag worth 5 points.

About this interactive

From the lesson: - **Congestion control** is about the network. Like rush-hour traffic, a path can flow well until a tipping point, and pushing more data into it only makes things worse: packets are dropped, resends add traffic, and the jam compounds. TCP backs the sender off, and the pauses for acknowledgments help meter the flow. - **Flow control** is about the receiver. Each acknowledgment can carry a window size, how much more data this host is willing to accept. A busy or slow receiver advertises a smaller window, and the sender sends no more than that. - **Silly window syndrome:** a receiver that keeps advertising tiny windows, so each send carries very little.

What you'll learn

Aligned to

CompTIA Network+
1.4 Explain common networking ports, protocols, services, and traffic types.
Cisco CCNA
1.5 Compare TCP to UDP

Key terms

Flow Control
A protocol function that manages the rate of data transmission between devices to prevent overwhelming the receiver.
Congestion Control
A TCP mechanism that adjusts the rate of data transmission in response to network congestion to prevent packet loss and degradation.
Window Size
A TCP header field that specifies how many bytes the receiver is willing to accept at one time, enabling flow control between devices.
Windowing
A flow control technique in TCP that controls how much data can be sent before an acknowledgement is required from the receiver.
Acknowledgement
ACK
A signal sent by a receiving device to confirm that a segment has been received, and to indicate the next expected sequence number.

Topics

Tcp Flow Control Congestion Control Window Size Interactive Streak Sort

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