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Circuit vs. Packet Switching

Taxonomy of Switched Wide Area Networks

WAN
Telecommunication
Systems

intelligent core dumb core

dumb nodes intelligent nodes

Circuit-Switched
Packet-Switched
Networks
Networks
(e.g. telephone networks)
connectionless connection-oriented

Datagram Networks Virtual Circuit

(e.g. the Internet) (e.g. ATM)

connection-oriented connectionless
service (TCP) service (UDP)
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Circuit vs. Packet Switching (cont.)
Network Core – mesh of routers/switches that interconnect end systems
• two fundamental approaches to building a WAN core:

(1) circuit switching (example: telephone networks)

• a sequence of links (communication path) between
two communicating nodes is determined ahead of
the actual communication
• on each physical link, a channel is dedicated to the
connection
• data is sent as a stream of bits through the network

(2) packet switching (example: the Internet)

• data is sent through network in short blocks – packets
• network links are dynamically shared by many packets;
each packet uses full link bandwidth

LAN 1
WAN Core Network
LAN 2
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Circuit vs. Packet Switching (cont.)

Circuit-Switched
Networks
(e.g. telephone networks)
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Circuit vs. Packet Switching (cont.)
Packet Switching:
Datagram Networks
(e.g. the Internet)
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Circuit Switching
Communication via – involves three phases:
Circuit Switching (1) circuit establishment
• before any data is transmitted, an end-to-end circuit
must be established, i.e. network resources on path/
links between end-devices must be reserved

(2) data transfer

• data transmission and signaling may each be digital
or analog

(3) circuit disconnect

• after some period of data transfer, the connection
is terminated, by action of one of two stations, and
dedicated resources are released

Vancouver
Toronto
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Circuit Switching (cont.)
Multiplexing in – each link can be shared among (up to) n “circuits” ⇒
Circuit-Switched each circuit gets a fraction 1/n of the link’s bandwidth
Networks • multiplexing = set of techniques that allows simultaneous
transmission of multiple signals across a single data link

• frequency division multiplexing (FDM) = each circuit

continuously gets a fraction of the link’s bandwidth

• time division multiplexing (TDM) = each circuit gets all

of the bandwidth periodically during brief intervals of time

FDM TDM

frequency time

time frequency
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Circuit Switching (cont.)

Advantages of • guaranteed Quality of Service – data are transmitted

at fixed (guaranteed) rate; delay at nodes is negligible
Circuit Switching

Disadvantages of • inefficient use of capacity – channel capacity is

Circuit Switching dedicated for the duration of a connection, even if
no data is being transferred
(example: silent periods in a phone call)

• circuit establishment delay – circuit establishment

introduces ‘initial delay’

• network complexity – end-to-end circuit establishment

and end-to-end bandwidth allocation is complicated
and requires complex signaling software to coordinate
operation of switches
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Packet Switching

Communication via (1) message segmentation

Packet Switching • longer message is broken up into series of packets
• packets contain user’s data + control data
• control data (header) contains information that network
requires to route the packet

(2) data transfer

• intermediate nodes perform following operations:
(a) receive entire packet
(b) determine next node and link on route
(c) queue packet to go out on that link
• when link is available, packet is transmitted to next
node
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Packet Switching (cont.)
Further Details of – each packet is treated independently with
Packet Switching no reference to packets that have gone
before!

• each packet contains the full (IP) address

its destination as well as its source

• each packet switch has a forwarding (routing)

table that maps destination addresses to an
output link

• when packet arrives at a packet switch, the

switch examines packet’s destination address
and chooses the next node on packet’s path
based on current traffic, line failure, etc.

• packets with the same destination address

do not necessarily follow the same route
⇒ packets may arrive out of sequence at
the destination !

• if packets arrive out of order, resequencing

must be performed at the destination
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Packet Switching (cont.)
Main Principle of • statistical multiplexing () on-demand rather than
Packet Switching pre-allocated sharing of resources – link capacity is shared
on packet-to-packet basis only among those users who
have packets that need to be transmitted over the link
(1) router buffers packets and arranges them in a queue
(2) as the transmission line becomes available, packets
are transmitted one by one …

queue of packets
waiting for output

A
Bandwidth division into “pieces”
Dedicated allocation
Resource reservation
B statistically multiplexed packets:
packets are interleaved
based on the statistics of the senders

• store-and-forward () switch must receive entire packet

before it can begin to transmit the first bit of the packet onto
the outbound link
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Packet Switching (cont.)
Example [ circuit switching vs. packet switching ]
• N=35 users share a 1 Mbps link
• each user generates 100kbps when “active” 100 kbps
• each user is active 10% of time
N users
How many users can be supported with circuit 1 Mbps link
and how many with packet switching? 100 kbps

Circuit Switching
With circuit switching, 100kbps must be reserved for each user at all times. Hence, the
output link can support 1Mbps/100kbps = 10 simultaneous users.

Packet Switching
• 10 or fewer simultaneously active users ⇒ aggregate rate ≤ 1 Mbps ⇒ users’
packets flow through output link without delay, as in case of circuit switching
• more than 10 simultaneously active users ⇒ aggregate rate exceeds output capacity

With 35 users, probability of 10 or less simultaneously active users = 0.9996.

Thus, packet switching can support all 35 users with virtually no delay!
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Packet Switching (cont.)

Advantages of • greater line efficiency – node-to-node link dynamically

shared by many packets / connections
Packet Switching
• data rate conversion – two stations of different data
rates can exchange packets, because each connects to
its node at its proper data rate ⇒ nodes act as buffers

• no blocked calls – packets are accepted even under

heavy traffic, but delivery delay increases

Disadvantages of • transmission delay – each time a packet passes through

a packet-switching node, it incurs a delay not present in
Packet Switching circuit switching = the time it takes to absorb the packet
into an internal buffer

• variable delay – each node introduces additional variable

delay due to processing and queueing

• overhead – to route packets through a packet-switching

network, overhead information including the address of
destination and/or sequence information must be added to
each packet