International Business Machines Corporation

Cyriel Johan Agnes Minkenberg

Mircea R Gusat

Alan Frederic Benner

Craig Brian Stunkel

The present invention relates to a method and a system of flow control in a communication network. The method comprises determining if at least one sender buffer has a sufficient number of credits. The sufficient number of credits informs the sender buffer if the receiver buffer has an available buffer space corresponding to at least one data packet. The method further comprises transmitting the at least one data packet to at least one receiver buffer, if the at least one sender buffer has the sufficient number of credits. If the sufficient number of credits in the at least one sender buffer are absent, a data packet is transmitting speculatively to the at least one receiver buffer. If a negative acknowledgement is received for the transmitted data packet, a copy of the data packet can be retransmitted to the receiver buffer.

Method and a system for flow control in a communication network

The interconnecting network for switching data packets, having data and flow control information, comprises a local packet switch element (S) with local input buffers (I() . . . I(,y)) for buffering the incoming data packets, a remote packet switch element (S) with remote input buffers (I() . . . I(,y)) for buffering the incoming data packets, and data lines (L) for interconnecting the local and the remote packet switch elements (S, S). The interconnecting network further comprises a local and a remote arbiter (A, A) which are connected via control lines (CL) to the input buffers (I() . . . I(,y), I() . . . I(,y)), and which are formed such that they can provide that the flow control information is transmitted via the data lines (L) and the control lines (CL).

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Adliswil, Switzerland

Cyriel Johan Agnes Minkenberg