Flow Control
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Flow control provides a mechanism for suspending transmission while one device is busy or for some reason cannot further communicate. The DTE and DCE must agree on the flow control mechanism used for a communication session. There are two types of flow control: hardware and software.
Hardware Flow Control
Uses voltage signals on the RS232 status lines RTS / DTR (set by DTE) and CTS / DSR (set by DCE) to control the transmission and reception of data. See also RS232 pinout.
Software Flow Control
Uses dedicated ASCII control characters (XON / XOFF) to control data transmission. Software flow control requires text-based communication data or other data that does not contain any XON or XOFF characters.