Congestive collapse (or congestion collapse) is a condition which a packet switched computer network can reach, when little or no useful communication is happening due to congestion. Congestion collapse generally occurs at choke points in the network, where the total incoming traffic to a node exceeds the outgoing bandwidth. Connection points between a local area network and a wide area network are the most likely choke points.
When a network is in such a condition, it has settled (under overload) into a stable state where traffic demand is high but little useful throughput is available, and there are high levels of packet delay and loss (caused by routers discarding packets because their output queues are too full) and general quality of service is extremely poor.
Read more about this topic: Network Congestion
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