flow control
[′flō kən‚trōl] (engineering)
Any system used to control the flow of gases, vapors, liquids, slurries, pastes, or solid particles through or along conduits or channels.
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, 6E, Copyright © 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
flow control
Measures designed to adjust the flow of traffic into a given airspace, along a given route, or bound for a given aerodrome, so as to ensure the most effective utilization of the airspace (ICAO). ATC (air traffic control) may apply restrictions to the flow of air traffic to ensure that the elements of the common systems, such as airports or airways, do not become saturated.
An Illustrated Dictionary of Aviation Copyright © 2005 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved
flow control
(communications, protocol)The collection of techniques used
in serial communications to stop the sender sending data until
the receiver can accept it. This may be either software flow control or hardware flow control. The receiver typically
has a fixed size
buffer into which received data is written
as soon as it is received. When the amount of buffered data
exceeds a "high water mark", the receiver will signal to the
transmitter to stop transmitting until the process reading the
data has read sufficient data from the buffer that it has
reached its "low water mark", at which point the receiver
signals to the transmitter to resume transmission.
This article is provided by FOLDOC - Free Online Dictionary of Computing (foldoc.org)
flow control
(1) The management of transmission between two devices such as nodes in a network or between the CPU and peripheral devices. It provides notification to the sending device to slow down or speed up data transmission or data transfer due to the receiving device's current ability to keep up with it. Flow control also enables slower-speed devices to communicate with higher-speed ones and vice versa. See xon-xoff.
(2) In programming, the if-then and loop statements that make up the program's logic.Copyright © 1981-2025 by The Computer Language Company Inc. All Rights reserved. THIS DEFINITION IS FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY. All other reproduction is strictly prohibited without permission from the publisher.