Chapter 8

Switching

8.1
Overview
 Networks are used to interconnect many devices.
 We have checked with Local Area Networks.
 Now, wide area networks
 Since the invention of the telephone, circuit switching has
been the dominant technology for voice communications.
 Since 1970, packet switching has evolved substantially for
digital data communications. It was designed to provide a more
efficient facility than circuit switching for bursty data traffic.
 Two types of packet switching:
 Datagram (such as today’s Internet)
 Virtual circuit (such as Frame Relay, ATM)

2
 Switched network

8.3
 Taxonomy of switched networks

8.4
 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.

8.5
 A trivial circuit-switched network

8.6
 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.

8.7
8.8
8.9
 Delay in a circuit-switched network

8.10
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.
11
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?

12
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

13
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
 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
forwarded first. They will experience less delay than lower-
priority packets.

14
 8-2 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.

8.15
 Note

In a packet-switched network, there

is no resource reservation;
resources are allocated on demand.

8.16
 A datagram network with four switches (routers)

8.17
 Routing table in a datagram network

8.18
 Note

A router in a datagram network uses a

routing table that is based on the
destination address.

8.19
 Note

The destination address in the header of

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

8.20
 Delay in a datagram network

8.21
 8-3 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.

8.22
 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.
23
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
preestablished route knows where to forward such
packets.
 The node need not make a routing decision for each

packet.
 Example: X.25, Frame Relay, ATM

24
 Virtual-circuit identifier

8.25
 Switch and tables in a virtual-circuit network

8.26
Source-to-destination data transfer in a virtual-circuit network

8.27
 Setup request in a virtual-circuit network

8.28
 Setup acknowledgment in a virtual-circuit network

8.29
 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.

8.30
 Delay in a virtual-circuit network

8.31
Virtual Circuits v 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

32
 8-4 STRUCTURE OF A SWITCH

We use switches in circuit-switched and packet-

switched networks. In this section, we discuss the
structures of the switches used in each type of
network.

8.33
 Crossbar switch with three inputs and four outputs

8.34
 Multistage switch

8.35
 Note

In a three-stage switch, the total

number of crosspoints is
2kN + k(N/n)2
which is much smaller than the number of
crosspoints in a single-stage switch (N2).

8.36
 Design a three-stage, 200 × 200 switch (N = 200) with
k = 4 and n = 20.

8.37
 Note

According to the Clos criterion:

n = (N/2)1/2
k > 2n – 1
Crosspoints ≥ 4N [(2N)1/2 – 1]

8.38
 Time-slot interchange

8.39
 Time-space-time switch

8.40
 Packet switch components

8.41
 Input port

8.42
 Output port

8.43