Difference between Flow control and Error control
Flow control: Flow control is a mechanism which controls the amount of data that can be sent over a link before receiving an acknowledgment. Flow control is considered as a set of procedures that notifies the sender about the amount of data it can transmit before waiting for an acknowledgment from the receiver. Usually the sender and the receiver have different data processing speeds. The receiver may fail to process the data if the sender has higher data propagation speed. So flow control mechanism is a must. Sliding window method is used for flow control.
Error control: Error control signifies both error detection and error correction. Error control ensures that the data delivered to the destination must be error free and reliable. Error control mechanism allows the receiver to inform the sender about any frames lost or damaged. Single error or burst error both can be detected and corrected in through error control mechanism. Error control is done through automatic repeat request strategy. Three popular techniques of error control are stop and wait ARQ, Go-Back N ARQ, Selective Repeat ARQ.
| Flow control | Error control |
|---|---|
| 1. Flow control is defined as the proper management of the flow of data from the sender to the receiver. | 1. Error control is defined as the proper monitoring of data delivered to the destination is error free and reliable. |
| 2. Sliding window protocol, feedback-based flow control, rate based flow control are the popular techniques for the flow control mechanism. | 2. Party check, cyclie redundancy check (CRC), checlsum are popular approaches for error detection Hamming code, Reed-solomon code, convolution codes, low-density parity check codes are the popular techniques for error correction. |
| 3. Flow control prevents data loss by controlling amount of data. | 3. Error control can detect and correct error in the data but cannot data loss. |
| 4. Buffer memory of the receivers is being prevented from being exceeded by the control mechanism. | 4. Error control is only used for ensuring reliable transmission. It has no control over data overflow. |
| 5. Flow control only restricts the amount of data it has no control over whether the data received is as same as it was initially sent. | 5. Error control ensures that the data received by the receiver is reliable and as same as it was initially sent by the sender. |
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Contributed By: Romana Rahman Ema