Compiled by: Ghaus Muhammad Maqsood – Headstart school ISB

14 Communication and internet technologies

14.2 Circuit switching, packet switching

Circuit switching v/s packet switching:

Circuit switching is a type of switching in which a dedicated channel or circuit is established

for the duration of communications, a method used by the old traditional telephone call-
carried over the public switched telephone network (PSTN) it is also referred to as the plain
old telephone service (POTS).

Working of circuit switching:

A traditional telephone network

The PSTN networks are connected through central offices which act as telephone exchanges,
each serving a certain geographical area. For example, person A calls to person B:

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Compiled by: Ghaus Muhammad Maqsood – Headstart school ISB

The telephone network is trying different circuits to find an available channel.

A connection must be established before they start their conversations.

Once the channel is decided, it guarantees the full bandwidth and remains connected for the
duration of the communication session until users terminate their connections. When you are
making a traditional/PSTN call, you are actually renting the lines. That is why international
telephone call or long distance phone call was expensive.

Working of Packet switching:

Packet switching uses different methods.

Packet switching networks are connected through many routers

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Compiled by: Ghaus Muhammad Maqsood – Headstart school ISB

Each router is serving different segment of networks.

Data is broken into packets before it is transported.

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Compiled by: Ghaus Muhammad Maqsood – Headstart school ISB

In packet switching, packets can travel any path on the network to their destination because
each packet contains an IP address and sequencing information. Therefore they don’t need
to follow each other, they can travel any network path and they can find the fastest channel
available at any instant. They don’t need to arrive in sequence because they can re-
assemble together at the destination.

(a)

(b)

The internet is based on a packet switching protocol. TCP/IP

Circuit-switched networks and packet-switched networks have traditionally occupied different

spaces within corporations.

Circuit-switched networks are ideal for communication which requires data to be transmitted
in real-time (video conferencing for example).

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Compiled by: Ghaus Muhammad Maqsood – Headstart school ISB

Packet switched networks are more flexible and more efficient if some amount of delay is
acceptable (e-mail for example).

The circuit-switched networks are normally used for traditional telephone calls while the
packet-switched networks normally handle digital data.

But nowadays, you can get phone service delivered over the internet just like digital data
packets. This new technology is called Voice over IP or simply VOIP.

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