Lecture 26: Switching

Message switching: In message switching no physical path is established in advance between sender and receiver. Instead, it is sent and stored in the first switching office (i.e., router) and then forwarded later, one hop at a time. Each block is received in its entirety, inspected for errors, and then retransmitted. Telegrams were message switching. This technique needs routers with big buffers and also a single block may tie up a router- router line for minutes, useless for interactive traffic. Packet switching gets round this problem. ...

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