Chapter 8

Switching

8.1 Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
 Figure 8.1 Switched network

8.2
 Figure 8.2 Taxonomy of switched networks

8.3
 8-1 CIRCUIT-SWITCHED NETWORKS

A circuit-switched network consists of a set of switches

connected by physical links. A connection between two
stations is a dedicated path made of one or more links.
However, each connection uses only one dedicated
channel on each link. Each link is normally divided
into n channels by using FDM or TDM.

Topics discussed in this section:

Three Phases
Efficiency
Delay
Circuit-Switched Technology in Telephone Networks
8.4
 Note

A circuit-switched network is made of a

set of switches connected by physical
links, in which each link is
divided into n channels.

8.5
 Figure 8.3 A trivial circuit-switched network

8.6
 Circuit Switching
 Circuit switching:
 There is a dedicated communication path between
two stations (end-to-end)

The path is a connected sequence of links between
network nodes. On each physical link, a logical
channel is dedicated to the connection.
 Communication via circuit switching has three
phases:

Circuit establishment (link by link)

Routing & resource allocation (FDM or TDM)

Data transfer

Circuit disconnect

Deallocate the dedicated resources
 The switches must know how to find the route
to the destination and how to allocate
bandwidth (channel) to establish a connection.

8.7
 Note

In circuit switching, the resources need

to be reserved during the setup phase;
the resources remain dedicated for the
entire duration of data transfer until the
teardown phase.

8.8
 Example 8.1

As a trivial example, let us use a circuit-switched network

to connect eight telephones in a small area.
Communication is through 4-kHz voice channels. We
assume that each link uses FDM to connect a maximum
of two voice channels. The bandwidth of each link is then
8 kHz. Figure 8.4 shows the situation. Telephone 1 is
connected to telephone 7; 2 to 5; 3 to 8; and 4 to 6. Of
course the situation may change when new connections
are made. The switch controls the connections.

8.9
 Figure 8.4 Circuit-switched network used in Example 8.1

8.10
 Example 8.2

As another example, consider a circuit-switched network

that connects computers in two remote offices of a private
company. The offices are connected using a T-1 line
leased from a communication service provider. There are
two 4 × 8 (4 inputs and 8 outputs) switches in this
network. For each switch, four output ports are folded
into the input ports to allow communication between
computers in the same office. Four other output ports
allow communication between the two offices. Figure 8.5
shows the situation.

8.11
 Figure 8.5 Circuit-switched network used in Example 8.2

8.12
 Figure 8.6 Delay in a circuit-switched network

8.13
 Note

Switching at the physical layer in the

traditional telephone network uses
the circuit-switching approach.

8.14
 Circuit Switching Properties

 Inefficiency

Channel capacity is dedicated for the whole duration
of a connection

If no data, capacity is wasted
 Delay

Long initial delay: circuit establishment takes time
 Low data delay: after the circuit establishment,
information is transmitted at a fixed data rate with no
delay other than the propagation delay. The delay at
each node is negligible.
 Developed for voice traffic (public telephone
network) but can also applied to data traffic.

For voice connections, the resulting circuit will enjoy a
high percentage of utilization because most of the
time one party or the other is talking.

But how about data connections?

8.15
 8.2 Packet Switching Principles

 Problem of circuit switching

 Designed for voice service
 Resources dedicated to a particular
call
 For data transmission, much of the
time the connection is idle (say, web
browsing)
 Data rate is fixed

Both ends must operate at the same rate
during the entire period of connection

8.16
 Packet switching is designed to
 Basic Operation

 Data are transmitted in short packets

 Typically at the order of 1000 bytes
 Longer messages are split into series of packets
 Each packet contains a portion of user data plus some
control info
 Control info contains at least
 Routing (addressing) info, so as to be routed to the
intended destination
 Recall the content of an IP header!
 store and forward
 On each switching node, packets are received, stored
briefly (buffered) and passed on to the next node.

8.17
 Advantages of Packet Switching

 Line efficiency
 Single node-to-node link can be dynamically shared
by many packets over time
 Packets are queued up and transmitted as fast as
possible
 Data rate conversion
 Each station connects to the local node at its own
speed
 In circuit-switching, a connection could be
blocked if there lacks free resources. On a
packet-switching network, even with heavy
traffic, packets are still accepted, by delivery
delay increases.
 Priorities can be used
 On each node, packets with higher priority can be
8.18 forwarded first. They will experience less delay than
 Packet Switching Technique

 A station breaks long message into

packets
 Packets are sent out to the network
sequentially, one at a time
 How will the network handle this stream
of packets as it attempts to route them
through the network and deliver them to
the intended destination?
 Two approaches


Datagram approach

Virtual circuit approach
8.19
 8-2-1 DATAGRAM NETWORKS

In data communications, we need to send messages

from one end system to another. If the message is
going to pass through a packet-switched network, it
needs to be divided into packets of fixed or variable
size. The size of the packet is determined by the
network and the governing protocol.

Topics discussed in this section:

Routing Table
Efficiency
Delay
Datagram Networks in the Internet
8.20
 Note

In a packet-switched network, there

is no resource reservation;
resources are allocated on demand.

8.21
Datagram

22
 Figure 8.7 A datagram network with four switches (routers)

8.23
 Figure 8.8 Routing table in a datagram network

8.24
 Note

A switch in a datagram network uses a

routing table that is based on the
destination address.

8.25
 Note

The destination address in the header of

a packet in a datagram network
remains the same during the entire
journey of the packet.

8.26
 Figure 8.9 Delay in a datagram network

8.27
 Note

Switching in the Internet is done by

using the datagram approach
to packet switching at
the network layer.

8.28
 Sumary Datagram

 Each packet is treated independently,

with no reference to packets that have
gone before.
 Each node chooses the next node on a
packet’s path.
 Packets can take any possible route.
 Packets may arrive at the receiver out of
order.
 Packets may go missing.
 It is up to the receiver to re-order
packets and recover from missing
8.29 packets.
 8-2-2 VIRTUAL-CIRCUIT NETWORKS

A virtual-circuit network is a cross between a circuit-

switched network and a datagram network. It has
some characteristics of both.

Topics discussed in this section:

Addressing
Three Phases
Efficiency
Delay
Circuit-Switched Technology in WANs

8.30
 Virtual Circuit

 In virtual circuit, a preplanned route is

established before any packets are sent,
then all packets follow the same route.
 Each packet contains a virtual circuit
identifier instead of destination
address, and each node on the pre-
established route knows where to
forward such packets.
 The node need not make a routing decision
for each packet.
 Example: X.25, Frame Relay, ATM
8.31
 Virtual
Circuit

A route between stations

is set up prior to data
transfer.
All the data packets then
follow the same route.
But there is no dedicated
resources reserved for the
virtual circuit! Packets
need to be stored-and-
forwarded.
32
 Figure 8.10 Virtual-circuit network

8.33
 Figure 8.11 Virtual-circuit identifier

8.34
 Figure 8.12 Switch and tables in a virtual-circuit network

8.35
 Figure 8.13 Source-to-destination data transfer in a virtual-circuit network

8.36
 Figure 8.14 Setup request in a virtual-circuit network

8.37
 Figure 8.15 Setup acknowledgment in a virtual-circuit network

8.38
 Note

In virtual-circuit switching, all packets

belonging to the same source and
destination travel the same path;
but the packets may arrive at the
destination with different delays
if resource allocation is on demand.

8.39
 Figure 8.16 Delay in a virtual-circuit network

8.40
 Note

Switching at the data link layer in a

switched WAN is normally
implemented by using
virtual-circuit techniques.

8.41
 Virtual Circuits vs Datagram

 Virtual circuits
 Network can provide sequencing (packets arrive at the same
order) and error control (retransmission between two nodes).
 Packets are forwarded more quickly

Based on the virtual circuit identifier

No routing decisions to make
 Less reliable

If a node fails, all virtual circuits that pass through that node fail.
 Datagram
 No call setup phase

Good for bursty data, such as Web applications
 More flexible

If a node fails, packets may find an alternate route

Routing can be used to avoid congested parts of the network

42
 Comparison of
communication
switching techniques