SWITCHING

Switching
• Suppose a network of Six devices: A , B, C, D, E, F.

• If device A has point to point links to devices.

• A better solution is switching. Switch n/w consists of a series of interlink

nodes.

• When a user accesses the internet or another computer

network outside their immediate location, messages are
sent through the network of transmission media. This
technique of transferring the information from one computer
network to another network is known as switching.
• .
 Circuit Switching
• Circuit switching is a technique that directly connects the
sender and the receiver in an unbroken path.
• Telephone switching equipment.
• With this type of switching technique, once a connection
is established, a dedicated path exists between both ends
until the connection is terminated.
• Routing decisions must be made when the circuit is first
established, but there are no decisions made after that
time.
 Circuit Switching

• Circuit switching in a network operates almost the same way

as the telephone system works.
• A complete end-to-end path must exist before
communication can take place.
• A switching technology that establishes an electrical
connection b/w station using a dedicated path.
Circuit Switching

• Figure shows

• Computers on the left (A B C) and four

computers on the right.
Crossbar switch
• A switch consisting of a lattice of horizontal
and vertical path.
 Circuit switching
Advantages:
• The communication channel (once established) is dedicated.

Disadvantages:
• Possible long wait to establish a connection, (10 seconds,
more on long- distance or international calls.) during which
no data can be transmitted.
• More expensive than any other switching techniques,
because a dedicated path is required for each connection.
• Inefficient use of the communication channel, because the
channel is not used when the connected systems are not
using it.
Space – Division Switch
• In SDS the path are separated from each
other.

• SDS technology used in Analog networks but

• It has evolved through a long history of many

design.
Multistage Switches
• The solution of the crossbar sw. to use
Multistage switch.

• Which combine crossbar switches in several

stages.

• The design of a multistage switch depends on

the number of stage and sw: required.
Multiple paths
• The multistage switch..
Time Division Switches

• If the values are stored and transferred

to the output at a late time interval, the
technique is called as Time Switching.
 Time-Division Switch
• Time-division switching uses time-division multiplexing to
achieve switching. Two methods used are:
– Time-slot interchange (TSI) changes the order of the slots based on
the desired connection.
– TDM bus
 Time-slot interchange
• TSI consists of random access memory (RAM) with several
memory locations. The size of each location is the same as the
size of a single time slot.
• The number of locations is the same as the number of inputs.
• The RAM fills up with incoming data from time slots in the
order received. Slots are then sent out in an order based on
the decisions of a control unit.
 TDM bus
• Input and output lines are connected to a high-speed bus through input and
output gates (microswitches)
• Each input gate is closed during one of the four slots.
• During the same time slot, only one output gate is also closed. This pair of
gates allows a burst of data to be transferred from one specific input line to
one specific output line using the bus.
• The control unit opens and closes the gates according to switching need.
 Comparison of SDM and TDM

• SDM
– Advantage:
• Instantaneous.
– Disadvantage:
• Number of cross points required.
• TDM
– Advantage:
• No cross points.
– Disadvantage:
• Processing delay.
 TST switch

• Combine Space division and time division switching.

• This results in switches that are optimized both physically (the
number of crosspoints) and temporally (the amount of delay).
• Various types are: time-space-time (TST), time-space-space-
time (TSST), space-time-time-space (STTS), etc.
PSTN
• An example of ckt switching is PSTN.

• The switching center are organized into five

classes.

• Dialing concept but today dialing is accomplish

through Touch-Tone Technique.
 A telephone system

• Telephone networks use circuit switching.

• In 1800s, Plain old telephone system (POTS) was an analog system using analog
signals to transmit voice.
• In 1980s, POTS started carrying data along with voice and also has become
digital instead of analog.
• Major components of Telephone network: Local loops, trunk, and switching
office.
• Different levels of switching offices: End offices, tandem offices, and regional
offices.
• Local loop: Twisted pair cable that connects the subscriber telephone to the
nearest end office or local central office. It has a bandwidth of 4000 Hz for voice.
The first three digits of local telephone number define the office, and the next
four digits define the local loop number.
• Trunks: Transmission media that handle communication between offices. It
handles hundreds or thousands of connections through multiplexing.
Transmission is usually through optical fibers or satellite links.
 Switching office: To avoid having a permanent
physical link between any two subscribers, switches
are located here. Switch connects several local loops or
trunks and allows different subscribers to connect.
Packet switching
• Ckt switching was designed for voice
communication.
• Ckt switching create temporary or permanent
dedicated link
• Ckt switching is less well suited to data and
other nonvoice transmission
• A ckt switching connection for data
transmission , its data rate.
• A best solution for data transmission is packet
switching . In this data are transmitted in
discrete units of potentially variable length
blocks.

• The maximum length of packet.

• Long transmission are broken.

Datagram Approach
• A data transmission method in which each
data unit is independent of others.

• Packet in this technology knows as …?

• Fig shows how the data gram approach can be

delivered four packets A to X station.
Virtual circuit Approach
• A packet switching method in which all packet
of message or session follow the exact same
route.

• Message or session is preserved.

• Two types of VCA , SVC and PVC

 Packet Switching
• Packet switching can be seen as a solution that tries to combine the
advantages of message and circuit switching and to minimize the
disadvantages of both.
• There are two methods of packet switching: Datagram
and virtual circuit.
 Packet Switching
• In both packet switching methods, a message is broken into
small parts, called packets.
• Each packet is tagged with appropriate source and destination
addresses.
• Since packets have a strictly defined maximum length, they
can be stored in main memory instead of disk, therefore access
delay and cost are minimized.
• Also the transmission speeds, between nodes, are optimized.
• With current technology, packets are generally accepted onto
the network on a first-come, first-served basis. If the network
becomes overloaded, packets are delayed or discarded
(``dropped'').
 Packet size

• The size of the packet can vary from 180 bits, the
size for the Datakit® virtual circuit switch designed
by Bell Labs for communications and business
applications; to 1,024 or 2,048 bits for the 1PSS®
switch, also designed by Bell Labs for public data
networking; to 53 bytes for ATM switching, such as
Lucent Technologies' packet switches.
 Packet switching

• In packet switching, the analog signal from your phone is

converted into a digital data stream. That series of digital
bits is then divided into relatively tiny clusters of bits, called
packets. Each packet has at its beginning the digital address
-- a long number -- to which it is being sent. The system
blasts out all those tiny packets, as fast as it can, and they
travel across the nation's digital backbone systems to their
destination: the telephone, or rather the telephone system,
of the person you're calling.
• They do not necessarily travel together; they do not travel
sequentially. They don't even all travel via the same route.
But eventually they arrive at the right point -- that digital
address added to the front of each string of digital data --
and at their destination are reassembled into the correct
order, then converted to analog form, so your friend can
understand what you're saying.
 Packet Switching: Datagram
• Datagram packet switching is similar to message switching in
that each packet is a self-contained unit with complete
addressing information attached.
• This fact allows packets to take a variety of possible paths
through the network.
• So the packets, each with the same destination address, do not
follow the same route, and they may arrive out of sequence at
the exit point node (or the destination).
• Reordering is done at the destination point based on the
sequence number of the packets.
• It is possible for a packet to be destroyed if one of the nodes on
its way is crashed momentarily. Thus all its queued packets may
be lost.
 Packet Switching:Virtual Circuit
• In the virtual circuit approach, a preplanned route is established
before any data packets are sent.
• A logical connection is established when
 a sender send a "call request packet" to the receiver and
 the receiver send back an acknowledge packet "call accepted
packet" to the sender if the receiver agrees on conversational
parameters.
• The conversational parameters can be maximum packet sizes,
path to be taken, and other variables necessary to establish and
maintain the conversation.
• Virtual circuits imply acknowledgements, flow control, and error
control, so virtual circuits are reliable.
• That is, they have the capability to inform upper-protocol layers
if a transmission problem occurs.
 Packet Switching:Virtual Circuit

• In virtual circuit, the route between stations does not mean that
this is a dedicated path, as in circuit switching.
• A packet is still buffered at each node and queued for output over
a line.
• The difference between virtual circuit and datagram approaches:

 With virtual circuit, the node does not need to make a routing
decision for each packet.
 It is made only once for all packets using that virtual circuit.
 Packet Switching: Virtual Circuit

VC's offer guarantees that

 the packets sent arrive in the order sent

 with no duplicates or omissions
 with no errors (with high probability)
regardless of how they are implemented internally.
 Advantages of packet switching

Advantages:
• Packet switching is cost effective, because switching
devices do not need massive amount of secondary
storage.
• Packet switching offers improved delay characteristics,
because there are no long messages in the queue
(maximum packet size is fixed).
• Packet can be rerouted if there is any problem, such as,
busy or disabled links.
• The advantage of packet switching is that many
network users can share the same channel at the same
time. Packet switching can maximize link efficiency by
making optimal use of link bandwidth.
 Disadvantages of packet switching
Disadvantages:
• Protocols for packet switching are typically more complex.
• It can add some initial costs in implementation.
• If packet is lost, sender needs to retransmit the data.
• Another disadvantage is that packet-switched systems still
can’t deliver the same quality as dedicated circuits in
applications requiring very little delay - like voice
conversations or moving images.
SVC
• A virtual ckt transmission method in which a
virtual ckt is created and in existence only for
the duration of the exchange.

• Virtual Ckt.

• The fig shows the concepts of SVC

PVC
• SVCs are used in situations where data
transmission is sporadic and/or not always
between the same data terminal
equipment (DTE) endpoints.
• A permanent virtual circuit (PVC) is a
virtual circuit established for
repeated/continuous use between the
same DTE.
 Message Switching

• With message switching there is no need to establish a

dedicated path between two stations.
• When a station sends a message, the destination address is
appended to the message.
• The message is then transmitted through the network, in its
entirety, from node to node.
• Each node receives the entire message, stores it in its
entirety on disk, and then transmits the message to the next
node.
• This type of network is called a store-and-forward network.
 Message Switching

A message-switching node is typically a general-purpose computer. The device

needs sufficient secondary-storage capacity to store the incoming messages,
which could be long. A time delay is introduced using this type of scheme due to
store- and-forward time, plus the time required to find the next node in the
transmission path.
 Message Switching
Advantages:
• Channel efficiency can be greater compared to circuit-
switched systems, because more devices are sharing the
channel.
• Traffic congestion can be reduced, because messages may be
temporarily stored in route.
• Message priorities can be established due to store-and-forward
technique.
• Message broadcasting can be achieved with the use of
broadcast address appended in the message.
 Message Switching

Disadvantages
• Message switching is not compatible with interactive
applications.
• Store-and-forward devices are expensive, because they
must have large disks to hold potentially long messages.