Packet Switching - What Is It?
Packet Switching involves slicing digital messages into discrete units (packets), sending the packets different communication paths, and finally reassembling those communication packets at their final destination.
What Did Packet
Switching do For Us?
The internet/network uses packet switching to send and receive signals. Packet switching made the process of sending and receiving online data faster and more efficient. Before packet switching transformation of communication or data was done on a one-to-one circuit. Once that one-to-one circuit is complete the next stage of communication can develop. This made the process of exchanging information lengthy and sometimes difficult. In fact, most of the time these one-to-one exchanges were exploit the capacity of the communication channel. Pauses and waiting times made over 70% of the communication network capacity useless. With packet switching, those pauses and or waiting periods were unaccounted for. The capacity of the network being used was 100% all of the time. Making the communication channel work more proficiently.
Imagine a car that got 10 miles per gallon…one day that car woke up and now it
gets 1,000 miles per gallon and little was changed on the car as a whole. Packet switching was this effective.
The Timeline for packet switching goes as follows:
1. You
send a message – Text Message – In letter
form
2. This message is broken down into packets, appended to each packet are codes that indicate the source address and a destination address. – 00110010 00111010 10110011
3. Instead of being sent directly to the destination address, the packets travel from computer to computer until they reach their destination. The computers involved are referred to as routers.
4. A routing algorithm ensures that each packet takes the best possible path to its final destination.
There is no dedicated circuit which means that packet switching can make use of any left over capacity that originally was being taken up by pauses. This allows packet switching to make use of nearly all communication capacity. If one path is busy, messages take another path that is not at full capacity. This enabled multiple people to be on one network and working efficiently at the same time.
photo courtesy of : http://viadrina.euv-frankfurt-o.de/~sk/Pub/20c3/packet-switching.JPG
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