congestionaware

Congestionaware (often written congestion-aware) is a property of networked systems in which components detect and respond to network congestion to improve performance, efficiency, and fairness. Such systems rely on signals such as queue length, round-trip time, packet loss, and explicit congestion notification to assess congestion levels and adapt behavior before queues overflow.

In transport protocols, congestionaware mechanisms modulate sending rate or window size in response to congestion signals. In routing and traffic engineering, congestion-aware methods select routes and schedule traffic through less congested links or time slots. In data center and wireless networks, congestion-aware schedulers and rate controllers aim to reduce tail latency and improve utilization by balancing load and avoiding hotspots.

Implementation considerations include measurement accuracy, feedback delay, stability and fairness across flows, interoperability with traditional congestion controls, and signaling overhead. Security and privacy concerns may arise from manipulation of congestion signals, while deployment challenges include incremental compatibility and the need for standardized metrics.

Related topics include congestion control, explicit congestion notification, queue management, and quality of service.