In telecommunication, the term circuit switching has the following meanings:
1. A method of routingtraffic between an originator and a destination through switching centers, from local users or from other switching centers, whereby a continuous electrical circuit is established and maintained between the calling and called stations until it is released by one of those stations.
The method of establishing the connection and monitoring its progress and availability may utilize a separate control channel as in the case of ISDN or not as in the case of the Public Switched Telephone Network.
2. A process that, on demand, connects two or more dataterminal equipments (DTEs) and permits the exclusive use of a data circuit between them until the connection is released. The acronym CSD (Circuit Switched Data) is also used, as in GSM's original data transfer method HSCSD.
Circuit switching has been used extensively for the public switched telephone network.
In telecommunications, a circuitswitching network is one that establishes a dedicated circuit (or channel) between nodes and terminals before the users may communicate.
Circuitswitching can be relatively inefficient because capacity is wasted on connections which are set up but are not in continuous use (however momentarily).
Circuitswitching contrasts with packet switching which splits traffic data (for instance, digital representation of sound, or computer data) into chunks, called packets, that are routed over a shared network.
This contrasts with the other principal paradigm, circuitswitching, which sets up a dedicated connection between the two nodes for their exclusive use for the duration of the communication.
Circuitswitched networks, such as the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), also perform routing to find paths for circuits over which large amounts of data can be sent without continually repeating the complete destination address.
Packet switching influenced the development of the Actor model of concurrent computation in which messages sent to the same address may be delivered in an order different from the order in which they were sent.
Feeds |
Contact