What is Ethernet flow control?

Ethernet flow control is a mechanism for temporarily stopping the transmission of data on Ethernet family computer networks. The goal of this mechanism is to avoid packet loss in the presence of network congestion.

The first flow control mechanism, the pause frame, was defined by the IEEE 802.3x standard. The follow-on priority-based flow control, as defined in the IEEE 802.1Qbb standard, provides a link-level flow control mechanism that can be controlled independently for each class of service , as defined by IEEE P802.1p and is applicable to data center bridging networks, and to allow for prioritization of voice over IP , video over IP, and database synchronization traffic over default data traffic and bulk file transfers.