Traffic flow (computer networking)

<p>In <a href="/facts/Packet_switching/olDlDP1R">packet switching</a> networks, traffic flow, packet flow or <i>network flow</i> is a sequence of <a href="/facts/Packet_(information_technology)/xCYf8SJu">packets</a> from a source <a href="/facts/Computer/SQe1aK05">computer</a> to a destination, which may be another host, a <a href="/facts/Multicast/D9IspSfl">multicast</a> group, or a <a href="/facts/Broadcast/AV1f3dGy">broadcast</a> domain. RFC 2722 defines traffic flow as "an artificial logical equivalent to a call or connection." RFC 3697 defines traffic flow as "a sequence of packets sent from a particular source to a particular unicast, anycast, or multicast destination that the source desires to label as a flow.  A flow could consist of all packets in a specific transport connection or a media stream.  However, a flow is not necessarily 1:1 mapped to a transport connection." Flow is also defined in RFC 3917 as "a set of IP packets passing an observation point in the network during a certain time interval."
Packet flow temporal efficiency can be affected by <a href="/facts/End-to-end_delay/gBKzavMl">one-way delay (OWD)</a> that is described as a combination of the following components: 
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<ul><li><a href="/facts/Processing_delay/nAUYRSwV">Processing delay</a> (the time taken to process a packet in a <a href="/facts/Network_node/LBp2vNcJ">network node</a>)</li>
<li><a href="/facts/Queuing_delay/Kbr94SPe">Queuing delay</a> (the time a packet waits in a queue until it can be transmitted)</li>
<li><a href="/facts/Transmission_delay/kvtQ8glB">Transmission delay</a> (the amount of time necessary to push all the packet into the wire)</li>
<li><a href="/facts/Propagation_delay/tUcrAwwe">Propagation delay</a> (amount of time it takes the signal’s header to travel from the sender to the receiver)</li></ul>

Traffic flow (computer networking) open-in-new

Traffic flow (computer networking)