Note on Serial Flow Control

Linux PPP HOWTO
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# 12.4. Note on Serial Flow Control

When data is traveling on serial communication lines, it can happen that data arrives faster than a computer can handle it (the computer may be busy doing something else - remember, Linux is a multi-user, multi- tasking operating system). In order to ensure that data is not lost (data does not over run in the input buffer and hence get lost), some method of controlling the flow of data is necessary.

There are two ways of doing this on serial lines:-

- Using hardware signals (Clear To Send/Request to Send - CTS/RTS).

- Using software signals (control S and control Q, also known as XON/XOFF).

Whilst the latter may be fine for a terminal (text) link, data on a PPP link uses all 8 bits - and it is quite probable that somewhere in the data there will be data bytes that translate as control S and control Q. So, if a modem is set up to use software flow control, things can rapidly go berserk!

For high speed links using PPP (which uses 8 bits of data) hardware flow control is vital and it is for this reason that you must use hardware flow control.

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