congestion

1 excessive accumulation of blood or other fluid in a body part

2 excessive crowding; "traffic congestion" [syn: over-crowding]

English

Noun

1. The act of gathering into a heap or mass; accumulation.
2. An excess of traffic etc.
3. Overfullness of the capillary and other blood vessels, etc., in any locality or organ (often producing other morbid symptoms); local hyper/mia, active or passive; as, arterial congestion; venous congestion.
4. An excess of mucus or fluid in the respiratory system; congestion of the lungs, or nasal congestion.

Translations

• Italian: congestione

Derived terms

• congestion charge

Congestion is a state of excessive accumulation or overfilling or overcrowding. In specific contexts the word has a more precise definition and usage.

• In telecommunication, the term has the following meanings:
  1. In a communications switch, a state or condition that occurs when more subscribers attempt simultaneously to access the switch than it is able to handle, even if unsaturated.
  2. In a saturated communications system, the condition that occurs when an additional demand for service occurs.
  3. Network congestion.
• In medicine and pathology the term is used to describe excessive accumulation of blood or other fluid in a particular part of the body, such as nasal congestion.
• Traffic congestion occurs when the volume of traffic exceeds the capacity of a roadway.
• In electric power transmission, it means the inability to supply an area with the cheapest available generation due to a binding constraint on the point to point transmission route. Some plant or equipment could be causing the constraint due to thermal overload or security limits being potentially breached.

See also

• Congestion control
• Queue

Sources

• Federal Standard 1037C
• MIL-STD-188

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