Overview of Circuit Switching and Packet

Switching
This post gives a brief overview of circuit switching and two types of packet switching, namely
Virtual Circuit based packet switching and datagram based packet switching.

Switching Process
Switching is the method by which data is transferred from an input port to an output port of an
intermediate exchange switch. The most popular methods of switching are Circuit Switching and
Packet Switching. Packet Switching can be further classified into two sub-types, namely, Virtual
Ciruit (VC) switching and Datagram based packet switching.

Circuit Switching
Circuit switching is primarily used in Telephone networks and not in Computer networks. In
circuit switching,

An End to end circuit (path) is first reserved using a separate signaling protocol

Data transfer proceeds only after the circuit establishment phase

All data of that session passes through the same circuit

No other user can use this circuit till this session is completed

No signaling information is sent along with the data

Circuit is released after data transfer using the signaling protocol

An example illustrating circuit switching during a telephone call setup

Packet Switching
Packet switching is the process of transmitting data in small units called as packets. In packet
switching, data that is to be transmitted is split into smaller units. A small header containing
signalling/addressing information about the source and destination nodes is added to each such
small data unit, to form packets. Each packet is then routed from the source to the destination by
intermediate data exchange devices, using the signalling information present in each packet.
Packet switching is the switching method used in data networks for computer communication.
The diagram given below illustrates basic packet switching between a sender and a receiver
through a packet switched data network.

A typical packet switching process where each packet of the same session may take different routes

In packet switching,

There is no end to end circuit reservation

A packet consists of a header and data

Each packet has signaling information in the form of source and destination
addresses in the packet header.

Signalling information is used by intermediate data exchange devices to route

packets.

Exchange devices like routers and switches use a store and forward approach
for transmitting packets from an input port to an output port

Link utilization is efficient because there is no end to end reservation of

telecommunication links and multiple connections can simultanesouly share the
link.

Virtual Circuit and Datagram are two types of packet switching, both of which are used in
Computer Communication at different layers. While VC based packet switching is used
primarily at the data link layer, datagram based packet switching is used both at the data
link and network layers.

VC based Packet Switching

VC based switching is a method widely used in computer communication, especially at the data
link layer, to switch packets inside switched WAN networks. Popular protocols using VC based
switching include X.25, Frame-Relay, ATM and MPLS.
VC based switching is also called as connection-oriented packet switching because a logical (not
physical) connection is first established between sender and receiver, before data transfer starts.
In VC based switching,

Whenever a new session/flow of data transfer needs to happen between a source and a
destination node, a connection establishment phase is executed in the switched WAN
network, using a signalling protocol.

The signalling protocol (e.g. Label Distriution Protocol ( LDP) in MPLS) is first
used to identify an end to end path between the source and destination nodes.
Once such a path is identified, all packets of the data session/flow MUST
follow the same path. But this path is not reserved for this session alone and
multiple sessions can share the links in this path .

After identifying the path, packet switches/routers allocate a set of VC IDs or labels to
uniquely identify this connection. These labels do not have end-to-end significance and
only have local significance at each intermediate device.

Data is split into small units and appended with a packet header (containing
labels) to form packets.

Packets are switched within the WAN network through labels . Usually the
length of the label is shorter than IP and layer 2 addresses thereby enabling
faster lookup.

At each intermediate device/packet switch, the device looks at the incoming

label and link. Based on this, it identifies a suitable outgoing link and an
outgoing label, by consulting a local VC table . The label inside the packet
header is modified accordingly and the packet is switched out of the outgoing
link.

At the end of the data transfer phase, the labels are released from the VC table.

VC based switching is very useful in Switched WAN Core Backbone Networks

for fast switching and better traffic Engineering

The diagram given below illustrates a sample VC based switched WAN topology
involving six routers (R1 to R6), with two different flows. The first flow is shown
in red colour and is through the path R1-R2-R3-R4. The second flow is shown
ingreen colour and is through the path R5-R3-R6.

An example illustrating VC based switching for two separate flows

Note that all packets of the same flow follow the same path. A sample VC table at Router R3
is shown in the diagram given below:
Sample VC table at Router R3

A sample VC table at R3 containing labels for both the flows

As shown in the above VC table, the first entry is for the flow shown in red colour. It states that
if a packet comes to R3 via. link 2 and with label 45, then R3 has to change the label in the
packet to value 33 and send it via. its link 5. Similarly, the second entry in the table is for the
flow shown in green colour. It states that if a packet comes to R3 via. link 3 and with label 22,
then R3 has to change the label in the packet to value 24 and send it via. its link 4.
Since all packets of the same flow follow the same path, prioritized treatment could be given to
packets belonging to specific flows, inside packet switches, for the purpose of better Quality Of
Service (QOS).

Datagram based Packet Switching

Datagram switching is simpler and more widely used than VC based switching. Datagram
based packet switching is the fundamental method/technique used in the Internet for endto-end routing of packets at the Network Layer, between remote communicating
computers.
In datagram based switching, data is split into smaller units and a header containing source and
destination addresses is added to each small unit to form packets. The packets of a flow are given
to the network and the network treats each packet independently and routes the packet using the
packet header alone.
The difference between VC based packet switching and datagram based packet switching
mainly consists of the following:
there is no signalling/call establishment phase in datagram based switching.
there is no concept of labels in datagram based packet switching and packets are routed based
on the destination address present in the packet header
In datagram based packet switching, destination address is left unchanged at each intermediate
device
In datagram based packet switching, each packet of a flow need not follow the same path
between the source and destination nodes and may take different routes.
The following holds true for Datagram based packet switching

It is also called connectionless packet switching

It has no connection establishment and termination phases

Each packet has header information and data

Each packet of a data session/flow is independently handled by the network,

with no correllation between other packets in the flow

Packets of each session may take different routes

Packets may also arrive out of order at the receiver

Very simple to implement and scales well, as there are no signalling protocols
and VC tables required at intermediate nodes

IP and Ethernet are example protocols using the principle of Datagram based Packet
Switching

The diagram given below illustrates a sample datagram based switching topology involving six
routers (R1 to R6), with two different flows. The first flow (say FLOW1) is shown in red colour
and is between a sender connected to R1 and a receiver connected to R4. . The second flow (say
FLOW 2) is shown in green colour and is between a sender connected to R5 and a receiver
connected to R6.

An example for datagram based packet switching with two different flows

Note that in datagram based packet switching, some packets of FLOW1 take the path R1-R3-R4,
whereas some other packets of the same FLOW1 take the path R1-R4 directly.
Similarly, note that some packets of FLOW2 take the path R5-R3-R6, whereas some other
packets of the same FLOW2 take the path R5-R6 directly.
Tags: Circuit Switching Datagram Switching Packet Switching Virtual Circuit Switching