Concepts of Circuit Switching Systems

998 Words2 Pages

Concepts of Circuit Switching Systems A circuit switched system is one where a dedicated connection must be set up between two nodes before they may communicate. For the duration of the communication, that connection may only be used by the same two nodes, and when the communication has ceased, the connection must be explicitly cancelled. A good example of this is the early telephone exchange systems, where one caller would ask the operator to connect them to a receiver, where the end result was a physical electrical connection between the subscriber's telephones for the duration of the call. The primary characteristics of a circuit switched network are fixed-bandwidth and low transmission delay once a connection has established. Also it can be quite expensive as when traffic is low on a virtual circuit unused transmission capacity is wasted i.e. during international or long distance calls the charges will add up until the call is ended, even when either party are not speaking. When data is sent it must arrive in sequencing order and at a constant arrival rate. References: Introduction to Networking, WestNet Learning Technologies Packet Switching Systems Packet-Switched networks, this networks divides all messages on the LAN (local area network) into small chunks called packets and attaches information to the front of the packet that identifies the recipient. The packets from all the machines on the local area network are placed on a high-bandwidth cable running through all the machines on the network. As packets move around the network, each machine analyses the header to see if the packet is for it. If not, it is sent furt... ... middle of paper ... ...he segment; that's like the house number. A host is any system that has an IP address; this can be devices like network-attached printers as well as individual computers. When the Internet first started, all IP addresses fell into one of three pre-defined address classes. The address class tells you which bits in the IP address are used for the network address, and which are used for host addresses. These three categories got translated into three different IP address classes: Class A, B, and C. Only the largest companies received Class A network addresses, while small companies were limited to Class C addresses. Each class uses a different part of the 32-bit IP address space as the network portion of the address, leaving the remaining bits for use as the host address. http://www.computerguru.net/tech/netw64.htm

More about Concepts of Circuit Switching Systems

Open Document