each end of a link such as bit rate link width etc the link layer is responsible for flow control handling to prevent the loss of packets due to buffer overflow by the receiver at each end of a link this mechanism does not describe end to end flow control such as might be utilised to prevent transmission of messages during periods when receive buffers are not posted the terms u201c transmitter u201d and u201c receiver u201d are utilised to describe each end of a given link the transmitter is the node sourcing data packets the receiver is the consumer of the data packets each end of the link has a transmitter and a receiver the infiniband architecture utilises an u201c absolute u201d credit based flow control scheme in which infiniband architecture receivers provide a u201c credit limit u201d a credit limit is an indication of the total amount of data that a transmitter has been authorised to send since link initialisation credit control is performed by a media access control mac protocol with respect to a given link a receiver advertises by means of a link packet that credit is available the amount of which is based on the current status of the receiver 39 s receive buffers the transmitter receives the link packet and determines how much transmit credit is available from the contents of the link packet the transmitter then assigns itself the available credit and transmits data packets to the receiver while simultaneously decrementing its available credit count the transmitter calculates its remaining available credit based on the.