ECC 17103 Communication Networks

Good morning everyone

• Circuit Switching
• Space/time division switching
• Packet switching Regards
Aparna
• connect eight telephones in a small area.
• Communication is through 4-kHz voice channels
• each link uses FDM to connect a maximum of two voice channels.
• The bandwidth of each link is then 8 kHz
• Telephone 1 is connected to telephone 7; 2 to 5; 3 to 8; and 4 to 6.
• Switch controls the connections

Ref: Data Communications and Network by Forouzan, Behrouz

• consider a circuit-switched network that connects computers in two remote offices
of a private company.
• The offices are connected using a T-1 line leased from a communication service
provider.
• There are two 4 × 8 (4 inputs and 8 outputs) switches in this network.
• For each switch, four output ports are folded into the input ports to allow
communication between computers in the same office.
• Four other output ports allow communication between the two offices.

Ref: Data Communications and Network by Forouzan, Behrouz

 A switching node
Major elements of a Circuit – Switch Node

 Digital Switch
 Network Interface
 Control Unit

Ref: Data and Computer Communications by William Stallings

 Space Division Switching

 Originally developed for analog, telephone

communication
 Later adapted to digital
 Signals are divided in space or physically separated
 It is a crossbar matrix
 Space Division Switching
• crossbar matrix with 10 full-duplex I/O
lines
• Form of a two dimensional matrix
• The matrix has 10 inputs and 10
outputs
• At each cross you have got an
electromechanical switch or micro
switch
• With the help of a micro switch either a
connection can be established
between a vertical line and a horizontal
line

Ref: Data and Computer Communications by William Stallings

 Space Division Switching

• Each station attaches to the matrix via

one input and one output line
• Interconnection is possible between
any two lines by enabling the
appropriate crosspoint
• Total 100 cross points

Ref: Data and Computer Communications by William Stallings

 Space Division Switching

 The basic building block of the switch is a

metallic cross-point or semiconductor gate
that can be enabled or disabled by a control
unit
 Control unit is controlling the digital switch and
digital switch in case of space division
switching is this cross bar
 Space Division Switching

 Earlier versions of these switches were very

bulky
 Now, with VLSI advancement, semiconductor
based smaller switches possible
 Xilinx crossbar switch using Field Programmable Gate
Arrays
 High speed high capacity
 Provides very high capacity varying from 64 by 64 to 1k by
1k, at very high speed of 200 Mbps
 Blocking/non-blocking networks
 A blocking network is one which may be unable to connect
two stations because all possible paths between them are
already in use
 On the other hand, a non-blocking 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.
 For a network which supports only voice traffics, a blocking
configuration may be acceptable since most phone calls are
of short duration
 Blocking/non-blocking networks

 A blocking network is acceptable in voice environment

because most of the time people are not talking that
means the usage is much less.
 On the other hand, in data applications the connection
remains active for hours.
 For data applications, non-blocking configuration is
desirable
 Limitations of crossbar switch

 The number of crosspoints grows with the square of the

number of attached stations
 For a large switch, cost is very high
 If you are having 1000 input and 1000 output or 1000
by1000 switch, so in such a case we will require one
million crosspoints!
 Limitations of crossbar switch

 The failure of a cross point

prevents connection between
the two devices whose lines
intersect at the crosspoint

Ref: Data and Computer Communications by William Stallings

 Limitations of crossbar switch
 The cross points are inefficiently
utilized : even if all devices are
communicating, only a small
fraction of cross points are
engaged
 For a 100 by 100 switch, when all
devices are active, how many
cross points are not engaged?

 For increasing efficiency, multistage switch can be used

 3-stage space division switch

• splitting the cross bar switch

into smaller units and
interconnecting them it is
possible to build multistage
switches with fewer crosspoints
• 8 by 8 switch
• 8 inputs 8 outputs
• If it was a single switch you
need 64 crosspoints
• Here you need how many crosspoints?
• For a larger switch, reduction is significant
• There is more than one path through the network to connect two
endpoints and this increases the reliability
• If there is a failure in one path another path can be used for establishing
the connection
 3-stage space division switch

• Multistage switches may lead to

blocking but this problem can be
tackled by increasing the number
or size of the intermediate
switches which also increases
the cost.
• For example, we want to
establish connection from 1 to 3,
2 to 4, 3 to 6 and 4 to 8
• How can we do?

• After 1 to 3 and 2 to 4 are established, 3 t 6 and 4to 8 are not possible

because paths are busy
• Becomes blocking
 Time division swiitching

• Based on Time Division Multiplexing and here both

voice and data can be transferred using digital signals
• All modern circuit switches use digital Time Division
Multiplexing techniques for establishing and
maintaining circuits
• synchronous TDM allows multiple low speed bit
streams to share a high speed line.
 Time division swiitching
TDM
I j

TDM
With switching

• TSI Time slot interchange

• We can do time slot interchange if we want to switch
• TSI introduces a delay and produces output slots in the desired order.

Ref: Data and Computer Communications by William Stallings

 Time division swiitching
• Mechanism of time slot
interchange
• Data is coming in slots then it is
stored in some memory
• In this memory the writing is done
in a sequential manner, ie. An
incoming TDM frame is written
sequentially, slot by slot, into the
data store
• the writing takes place
sequentially and reading takes
place sequentially

• An outgoing data frame is created by reading slots from the memory in an

order dictated by an address store that reflects the existing connections
• The data in channels I and J are interchanged, creating a full-duplex
connection between the corresponding stations

Ref: Data and Computer Communications by William Stallings

 Time division swiitching

• TSI is a simple, effective

way to switch TDM data
• Size of such a switch, in
terms of the number of
connections, is limited by
the amount of latency that
can be tolerated.
• The greater the number of
channels, the greater the
average delay that each
channel experiences

Ref: Data and Computer Communications by William Stallings

 Issues with circuit switching
• Network resources are dedicated to a particular connection
• In a typical user host data connection the utilization is very low.
Even for voice, utilization is not very high.
• Particularly, when the traffic is in burst, the utilization will be
very low
• Provides facility for data transmission at a constant rate, does
not allow variable 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
 Message Switching

• The limitations can be overcome by message

switching
Basic principle:
• each network node receives and stores the
packet, stores the message, determines the next
leg of the route and queues to go out on that link
• a store and forward approach
• Nodes have buffer, they are stored till a link/path
becomes available
 Message Switching

Advantages of this approach:

• Larger line efficiency since store and forward
approach is there
• A particular link is shared between different
resources during each message transmission
• Not wasted
 Message Switching

With message switching, the message stays in tact as it traverses the network.
Because the switches are store-and-forward packet switches, a packet switch must
receive the entire message before it can begin to forward the message on an
outbound link

Ref: Computer networking a top-down approach featuring the Internet by James

F. Kurose Keith W. Ross
 Message Switching

• Data rate conversion is possible

 Message Switching

• even under heavy traffic,

packets are accepted possibly
with a greater delivery delay

• whenever the messages are

queued and stored in the
storage, it is possible to assign
some priority to them
 Message Switching

• Thickness shows
volume of message

• message switching
overcomes some of
the limitations of the
circuit switching.

• there is no restriction on the size of the message; it can be very large. In

such a case what will happen is it monopolizes the link and the storage.