Error control of the detection and retransmission type requires an internal storage buffer when the data source cannot be stopped. With finite capacity there will be occasions when this internal buffer is overfilled. This paper investigates the relationships among the error statistics of the channel, the storage capacity of the buffer, the round‐trip transmission delay and the bit rate from the source. It is shown that the process can be treated as a Markov chain. The solution algorithm is programmed for machine computation, and representative cases are solved numerically. For typical values selected from the telephone plant, it is found that buffer capacities of a few hundred bits would be adequate.
The technique described should be useful for solving other problems in queueing theory.