Routing and Flow Control in High Speed, Wide Area Networks.

Routing and flow control mechanisms have been used in wide area, local area, and metropolitan area networks. The objective in this paper is to determine which of these mechanisms are applicable to high speed, wide area, store-and-forward networks. In wide area networks, the transmission facilities typically operate at a few tens of kilobits per second and are relatively expensive. Complex routing and flow control algorithms, that require a relatively large amount of processing, have evolved to efficiently use the expensive transmission facilities. In early store-and-forward, wide area networks, much simpler mechanisms were used that did not use the transmission facilities as efficiently. In local area networks, the transmission facilities typically operate at a few megabits per second and are relatively inexpensive. Simple topologies and access protocols have evolved that result in very little processing being required for routing or flow control. However, the transmission facilities in local area networks are not used as efficiently as those in wide area networks.