ECE 542

Telecommunications Engineering
Lecture 2
Switching and switches: Space and Time.

What you should know:

• Circuit and Packet Switching
• Types of Packet Switching
• Comparison of the various switching types (circuit, datagram virtual)
• Advantages and shortcomings of each

Switching
Brief History of Switching
Before going into the detail of Switches and Switches, it would be beneficial to
have a brief overview of the history of switching.
The precursor of modern day switching is the 19th century telephone switching.
The first telephone was invented in 1878 by Graham Bell in Boston,
Massachusetts. As the popularity of the telephone grew and more people were
getting connected, there was a need to have telephone exchanges which would
connect together people in the same area as well as serving as a gateway into
and out of the ‘local network’ of telephones. These early telephone exchanges
were operated by boys but soon women were employed to work on them
because they were more thorough, patient and generally more efficient.
The growing size of these telephone networks made the use of human input at
the telephones exchanges for switching purposes more difficult and therefore
there was a need for automation in switching. This led to the first automatic,
albeit crude switching mechanism invented by Almon Strowger in 1889.

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At inception, Strowger was able to inter connect 100 telephones but by 1914
following improvements on the switch, there were over 400,000 dial telephones
in the united states.
The first electronic switch was installed by AT&T, the #1 ESS (Electronic
Switching System) in a local exchange in Succasunna, New Jersey. This was an
analogue electronic switch and although digital electronic switches were
developed later, by 1970 electromechanical switch were already being phased
out.
Switching in any network involves the process of ensuring that information on
that network gets to the intended recipient. It directs signal or data towards that
destination. The process of switching is achieved by switches whose function is
to establish a connection between at least two links.
There are 3 methods of switching:
1. Circuit Switching
2. Packet Switching
3. Message Switching

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Circuit Switching
Circuit switching was developed to handle voice traffic but is now also used for
data traffic. The best-known example of a circuit-switching network is the
public telephone network which will be discussed in a later lecture.
In circuit switching, there is a dedicated path (circuit) between the
communicating devices. On each physical link, a logical channel is dedicated to
the connection. What the switch does in the setup is simply to activate or
deactivate the circuit. There is a need of pre-specified route from which data
travels and no other data is permitted. There are three phases involved in
communication via circuit switching:
1. Circuit establishment (Setup)
2. Data Transfer
3. Circuit Disconnect (Tear down)

Circuit Establishment
This is the first step that has to take place prior to any signal being transmitted.
This circuit must be end-to-end (circuit to circuit). The circuit could be between
two parties or multiple parties in the case of a conference call. The end systems
are normally connected through dedicated lines to the switches, so connection
setup means creating dedicated channels between the switches. Referring to
the figure below, when station A wants to communicate with Station E, it sends

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a request to node 4 to which it already has a dedicated connection requesting
for a connection to Station E. Node 4 then establishes a connection to Node 5
based on routing decisions and allocates a free channel on that link (using FDM
or TDM) and sends a message requesting connection to E. The process is
repeated on node 6 which would lead to a complete path connection to Station
E. In the next step to making a connection, an acknowledgment from system E
needs to be sent in the opposite direction to system A. Only after system A
receives this acknowledgment is the connection established.
Note that end-to-end addressing is required for creating a connection between
the two end systems. These can be, for example, the addresses of the computers
assigned by the administrator in a TDM network, or telephone numbers in an
FDM network.
It is to be noted that multiple stations may be attached to node 4, it must be
able to establish internal paths from multiple stations to multiple nodes.

Data Transfer Phase

Upon the establishment of the channel (circuit) between A and E, data can now
be transmitted between the stations through the network. The path is A-4 link,
internal switching through 4, 4-5 channel, internal switching through 5, 5-6

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channel, internal switching through 6, 6-E link. Generally, the connection is full
duplex.
Circuit Disconnect (Tear down)
After some period of data transfer, the connection is terminated, usually by the
action of one of the two stations. When one of the parties needs to disconnect,
a signal is sent to each switch to release the resources.
Note that the connection path is established prior to the commencement of data
transmission. Therefore, channel capacity must be reserved between each pair
of nodes in the path, and each node must have available internal switching
capacity to handle the requested connection. The switches must have the
intelligence to make these allocations and to devise a route through the
network.
Efficiency of Circuit Switching:
Circuit switching can be said to be inefficient due to the dedication of channel
capacity and resources during the entire duration of a connection even if no
data are being transferred. These dedicated resources are unavailable to other
connections. Because people generally terminate phone calls at the end of a
conversation, this is not really a problem in telephone networks so connection
utilization is high although not necessarily up to 100%. However, in computer
networks, a computer can be connected to another computer even if there is no
activity for a long time. In this case, allowing resources to be dedicated means
that other connections are deprived.
Delay:
Despite the low efficiency of circuit-switched network, it has minimal delay. This
delay is experienced prior to signal transfer for call establishment. However,
once the circuit is established, the network is effectively transparent to the
users. Information is transmitted at a fixed data rate with no delay other than
the propagation delay through the transmission links. There is no delay during
data transfer at the switch; the resources are allocated for the duration of the
connection.
As seen in the figure below, there is no waiting time at each switch. The total
delay is due to the time needed to create the connection, transfer data and
disconnect the circuit. The delay created by the setup is due to 4 factors:

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 • The propagation time of the source computer request (slope of the first
grey box)
• The request signal transfer time (height of the first grey box)
• The propagation time of the acknowledgment from the destination
computer (slope of the second grey box)
• The signal transfer time of the acknowledgment (height of the second
grey box)

The delay due to data transfer is because of:

• The propagation time (slope of the coloured box) and
• Data transfer time (height of the coloured box), which can be very long
The third box shows the time needed to tear down the circuit. In the figure, the
scenario whereby the receiver requests to disconnect is shown; this creates
minimum delay.
Circuit-Switching Concept
The concept of circuit-switching is best appreciated by considering the operation
of a single circuit-switching node. A network built around a single circuit-
switching node consists of a collection of stations attached to a central switching
unit. The central switch establishes a dedicated path between any two devices
that wish to communicate. The major elements of such single node network are
shown in the figure below. The dotted lines indicate the connections that are
presently active.

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The core of this system is the digital switch whose function is to provide a
transparent signal path between any pair of attached devices. Transparency
implies that it appears to the connected devices as if there is a direct
connection between them.
The network interface represents the functions and hardware needed to
connect digital devices to the network. With the presence of a logic for
conversion of analogue signals to digital signals, analogue devices can also be
connected.
The function of the control unit can be categorized into 3:
• Establishment of connections when requested. To do this, the control unit
must handle and acknowledge the request, determine if the intended
destination is free, and construct a path through the switch.
• Maintaining of connections. Because the digital switch uses time-division
principles, this may require ongoing manipulation of the switching
elements. However, the bits of the communication are transferred
transparently.

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 • Tearing down of connections.
A circuit-switching device can either be blocking or non-blocking. Blocking
occurs when the network is unable to connect two stations because of
unavailability of possible paths between them (the paths are already in use). A
nonblocking network permits all stations to be connected (in pairs) at once
and grants all possible connection requests as long as the called party is free.
A blocking configuration is acceptable when a network supports only voice
traffic because it is generally expected that most phone calls are of short
duration hence only a fraction of the telephones will be engaged at any time.
On the other hand, these assumptions may not be valid when data processing
devices are involved. For instance, for a data entry application, a terminal may
be continuously connected to a computer for very long periods. Therefore, for
data applications, there is a requirement for a nonblocking or “nearly
nonblocking” (very low probability of blocking) configuration.

Packet Switching
In packet switching, there is no resource allocation for a packet. This means that
there is no reserved bandwidth on the links, and there is no scheduled
processing time for each packet. Resources are allocated on demand. The
allocation is done on a first-come, first-served basis. When a switch receives a
packet, no matter what the source or destination is, the packet must wait if
there are other packets being processed.
Circuit-switched networks were originally meant for voice communications.
However, as they started being increasingly used for data communications,
some limitations were observed:
• In a typical user/host data connection (e.g., personal computer user
logged on to a database server), much of the time the line is idle. Thus,
with data connections, a circuit-switching approach is inefficient.
• In a circuit-switching network, the connection provides for transmission
at a constant data rate. Thus, each of the two devices that are connected
must transmit and receive at the same data rate as the other. This limits
the utility of the network in interconnecting a variety of host computers
and workstations.

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Data in packet-switched network needs to be divided into packets of fixed or
variable size. The size of the packet is determined by the network and the
governing protocol. This approach has a number of advantages over circuit
switching:
• Better line efficiency because of the ability of many packets to, over time,
dynamically share a single node-to-node link. The packets are queued up
and transmitted as rapidly as possible over the link. In comparison, Circuit-
switching would require time to be preallocated using synchronous time-
division multiplexing on the node-to-node link. A lot of the time such a
link may be idle because a portion of time is dedicated to a connection
that is idle.
• A packet-switching network can perform data-rate conversion. Two
stations of different data rates can exchange packets because each
connects to its node at its proper data rate.
• When traffic becomes heavy on a circuit-switching network, some calls
are blocked; that is, the network refuses to accept additional connection
requests until the load on the network decreases. On a packet-switching
network, packets are still accepted, but delivery delay increases.
• Priorities can be used. If a node has a number of packets queued for
transmission, it can transmit the higher-priority packets first. These
packets will therefore experience less delay than lower-priority packets.
There are two types of Packet-switching/Packet-switched networks:
• Datagram networks (connectionless service) and
• Virtual circuit networks (connection-oriented service).

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Datagram networks
In a datagram network, each packet is treated independently of all others. Even
if a packet is part of a multipacket transmission, the network treats it as though
it existed alone. Packets in this approach are referred to as datagrams.
The packets even though they may belong to the same message may travel
different paths to get to their destination. This is so because the links may be
involved in carrying packets from other sources and do not have the necessary
bandwidth available to carry all the packets from source to destination. This
approach can cause the datagrams of a transmission to arrive at their
destination out of order with different delays between the packets. Packets may
also be lost or dropped because of a lack of resources. In most protocols, it is
the responsibility of an upper-layer protocol to reorder the datagrams or ask for
lost datagrams before passing them on to the application. Also, it is possible for
a packet to be destroyed in the network. For example, if a packet-switching node
crashes momentarily, all of its queued packets may be lost. Again, it is up to
either the exit node or the destination to detect the loss of a packet and decide
how to recover it.

The datagram networks are sometimes referred to as connectionless networks.

The term connectionless here means that the switch (packet switch) does not
keep information about the connection state. There are no setup or teardown
phases. Each packet is treated the same by a switch regardless of its source or
destination.
Since there are not setup or teardown processes, packet switching makes use
of routing tables to send the received packets to their destinations. These
routing tables which are dynamic and periodically updated contain the
destination addresses for the packets. The destination addresses and the

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corresponding forwarding output ports are recorded in the tables. Every packet
in a datagram network carries a header that contains, among other information,
the destination address of the packet. When the switch receives the packet, this
destination address is examined; the routing table is consulted to find the
corresponding port through which the packet should be forwarded.
Efficiency:
The efficiency of a datagram network is better than that of a circuit-switched
network; resources are allocated only when there are packets to be transferred.
If a source sends a packet and there is a delay of a few minutes before another
packet can be sent, the resources can be reallocated during these minutes for
other packets from other sources.
Delay:
There may be greater delay in a datagram network than in a virtual-circuit
network. Although there are no setup and teardown phases, each packet may
experience a wait at a switch before it is forwarded. In addition, since not all
packets in a message necessarily travel through the same switches, the delay is
not uniform for the packets of a message.

The packet travels through two switches. There are three transmission times
(3T), three propagation delays (slopes 3τ of the lines), and two waiting times (w1
+ w2). Ignoring the switches’ internal processing times, the total delay can be
given as:
Total delay = 3T + 3τ + w1 + w2

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Advantage of datagram approach includes:
• The call setup phase is avoided. Thus, if a station wishes to send only one
or a few packets, datagram delivery will be quicker.
• Because it is more primitive, it is more flexible. For example, if congestion
develops in one part of the network, incoming datagrams can be routed
away from the congestion. With the use of virtual circuits, packets follow
a predefined route, and thus it is more difficult for the network to adapt
to congestion.
• Datagram delivery is inherently more reliable. With the use of virtual
circuits, if a node fails, all virtual circuits that pass through that node are
lost. With datagram delivery, if a node fails, subsequent packets may find
an alternate route that bypasses that node.

Virtual-circuit network (connection-oriented service)

In this method, a preplanned route is established before any packets are sent.
Once the route is established, all the packets between a pair of communicating
parties follow this same route through the network. Because the route is fixed
for the duration of the logical connection, it is somewhat similar to a circuit in a
circuit-switching network hence the name virtual circuit.
The virtual-circuit network is a hybrid of circuit-switched network and a
datagram network and has some shared characteristics of both. These are:
• The existence of setup, data transfer and teardown phases
• Resources can be allocated in the setup phase as in circuit-switched
network or on-demand as obtained with datagram network
• Packetized data each of which carries an address in the header. However,
this address has local jurisdiction and not end-to-end jurisdiction (local
significance and not network-wide significance). This means that the
address defines what the next switch should be and the channel on which
the packet is being carried.
• Like circuit-switching, all packets follow the same path established during
the connection.
• A virtual-circuit network is normally implemented in the data-link layer
while circuit-switched and datagram network are implemented at the
physical and network later respectively.

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In this type of service, not only must the packet contain the source and
destination addresses, it must also contain a flow label, a virtual circuit identifier
that defines the virtual path the packet should follow.

The difference from the datagram approach is that, with virtual circuits, the
node need not make a routing decision for each packet. It is made only once for
all packets using that virtual circuit.
To create a connection-oriented service, a three-phase process is used: setup,
data transfer, and teardown. In the setup phase, the source and destination
addresses of the sender and receiver are used to make table entries for the
connection-oriented service. In the teardown phase, the source and destination
inform the router to delete the corresponding entries. Data transfer occurs
between these two phases.
Efficiency:
As earlier stated, resource allocation in a virtual-circuit network can be made
during the setup or can be on demand during the data-transfer phase. In the
first case, the delay for each packet is the same; in the second case, each packet
may encounter different delays. There is one big advantage in a virtual-circuit
network even if resource allocation is on demand. The source can check the
availability of the resources, without actually reserving it. Consider a family that
wants to dine at a restaurant. Although the restaurant may not accept
reservations (allocation of the tables is on demand), the family can call and find
out the waiting time. This can save the family time and effort.

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Delay:
In a virtual-circuit network, there is a one-time delay for setup and a one-time
delay for teardown. If resources are allocated during the setup phase, there is
no wait time for individual packets. The figure below shows the delay for a
packet traveling through two switches in a virtual-circuit network.
The packet is traveling through two switches (routers). There are three
transmission times (3T), three propagation times (3τ), data transfer depicted
by the sloping lines, a setup delay (which includes transmission and
propagation in two directions), and a teardown delay (which includes
transmission and propagation in one direction). We ignore the processing time
in each switch. The total delay time is:
Total delay = 3T + 3τ + setup delay + teardown delay

If two stations wish to exchange data over an extended period of time, there are
certain advantages to virtual circuits.
• First, the network may provide services related to the virtual circuit,
including sequencing and error control. Sequencing refers to the fact that,
because all packets follow the same route, they arrive in the original
order. Error control is a service that assures not only that packets arrive
in proper sequence, but also that all packets arrive correctly.
• Another advantage is that packets should transit the network more
rapidly with a virtual circuit; it is not necessary to make a routing decision
for each packet at each node.

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Comparisons of the various switching modes are shown in the table below

Message Switching
Message switching is a network switching technique in which data is routed in
its entirety from the source node to the destination node, one node at a time.
This has been phased out in general communications but still has networking
applications such as in ad hoc sensor networks, military networks and satellite
communications networks. It requires that every intermediary node stores the
message prior to sending out as adequate resources become available. Some of
the disadvantages of this method of switching include:
• Slow speed due to processing in every node
• Not adequate for interactive and real-time processes such as multi-media
games and voice communications
• Need for substantial storage capacity because of the need to save the
messaged in the nodes
Further Reading
• Virtual circuit Identifier

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