An Explicit Rate Control Framework for Lossless Ethernet Operation

In this paper, an explicit rate control framework for Ethernet applications, especially data centers, is described. The framework guarantees zero packet drops at the congested switch and fast convergence to fair and stable state. In order to manage the congestion, design choices on 2-point and 3- point structures, the reactive and proactive signaling, explicit and implicit rate controls are compared. Then the core component of the framework, queue control, is carefully studied. Furthermore, we show that this framework can seamlessly cooperate with IEEE 802.3x PAUSE mechanism to recover from severe congestion scenarios. Numerical results are provided to support the claims.