a system for controlling traffic in a digital communication network to avoid data loss due to congestion utilizes both credit - based and rate - based traffic control approaches within a common framework , and adjusts the rate at which data is transmitted from a source in accordance with feedback in a form of credit values from a destination reflecting the ability of the network to transmit data and the destination to receive data . in one embodiment , the destination receives the information about network congestion , and , knowing its own capacity to receive more data , generates a credit in the form a numeric value which is fed back to the source so that the source adjusts its transmission rate to avoid data loss due to congestion in the network .