Ethernet Flow Control is defined by IEEE 802.3 for full-duplex operation. (See IEEE 802.3 for related Ethernet specifications.) It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Ethernet. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Ethernet. ... Ethernet is a frame-based computer networking technology for local area networks (LANs). ...
Ethernet is a specification used by computers to send information over a physical medium, such as copper cables or fibre optics.
It is impossible to make two devices exactly the same speed, one will always talk faster than the other, even two devices of the same rating. Due to this, one device may require the other to pause briefly so that information can be locally processed.
Flow control is the sub-specification that allows devices to send a message to the other host to request a pause in data transfer. If a device sends a pause frame, the receiving device is expected to halt transmission for the duration of time specified in the pause frame.
Flowcontrol is important because it is possible for a sending computer to transmit information at a faster rate than the destination computer can receive and process them.
Transmit flowcontrol can occur independently in the two directions of data transfer, thus permitting the transfer rates in one direction to be different from the transfer rates in the other direction.
Flowcontrol can be done either by control lines in a data communication interface (see serial port and RS 232), or by reserving in-band control characters to signal flow start and stop (such as the ASCII codes for XON/XOFF).
Ethernetflowcontrol, or 802.3x, is a way for a network device to tell its immediate neighbor that it is overloaded with data, such as when a device is receiving data faster than it can process it.
Flowcontrol operates at a lower layer than TCP or IP, and thus is independent of them.
Ethernetflowcontrol accomplishes the same thing as TCP flowcontrol in this situation, as they both slow down the data transmission to the speed that the slower device can handle.