Flow Control vs Congestion Control

Difference Between Flow Control and Congestion Control

 Flow control and congestion control, both are the traffic controlling mechanism but, both controls the traffic at different situations. The main difference between flow control and congestion control is that the flow control is a mechanism that controls the traffic between sender and receiver. On the other hand, the congestion control mechanism controls the traffic that is placed by the transport layer into the network.

Comparison	Flow Control	Congestion Control
Basic	It controls the traffic from a particular sender to a receiver.	It controls the traffic entering the network.
Purpose	It prevents the receiver from being overwhelmed by the data.	It prevents the network from getting congested.
Responsibility	Flow control is the responsibility handled by data link layer and the transport layer.	Congestion Control is the responsibility handled by network layer and transport layer.
Responsible	The sender is responsible for transmitting extra traffic at receivers side.	The transport layer is responsible transmitting extra traffic into the network.
Preventive measures	The sender transmits the data slowly to the receiver.	Transport layer transmits the data into the network slowly.
Methods	Feedback-based flow control and Rate-based flow control	Provisioning, traffic-aware routing and admission control

Similarities:

Both the flow control and the congestion control are traffic control mechanism.

Conclusion:

The flow control is the point to point control mechanism that controls the traffic between a sender and a receiver and prevents the receiver from being overwhelmed with the data transmitted by faster transmitting sender. The congestion control is the mechanism that controls the traffic on the network.