Chapter 8 Switching

1. Circuit-Switched Networks
2. Datagram Networks
3. Virtual-Circuit Networks
4. Structure of a Switch

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 Switching
• Switches are devices capable of creating temporary
connections between two or more devices linked to the
switch

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 Taxonomy of Switched Networks

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 Circuit-switched Network
• A circuit-switched network is made of a set of switches connected by
physical links, in which each link is divided into n channels
• In circuit switching, the resources need to be reserved during the setup
phase; the resources remain dedicated for the entire duration of data
transfer until the teardown phase.

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 Circuit-Switched Network: Example 1

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 Circuit-Switched Network: Example 2

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 Circuit Switching
• Three phases
– Setup phase, data transfer phase, teardown phase
• Delay in a circuit-switched network

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 Datagram Networks
• In a packet-switched network, there is no resource reservation;
resources are allocated on demand
• In a datagram network, each packet is treated independently of all
others. Sometimes referred to as connectionless networks

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 Routing Table
• A switch in a datagram networks uses a routing table that is based on
the destination address
• The destination address in the header of a packet in a datagram
network remains the same during the entire journey of the packet

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 Delay in a Datagram Network
• Datagram network may have greater delay than a virtual-
circuit network even though no setup and teardown phase
• Delay is not uniform

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 Virtual-Circuit Networks
• Setup, data transfer, and teardown phases as in a circuit-switched
network (CSN)
• Resource allocated during setup phase, as in a CSN, or on demand as
in a datagram network (DN)
• As in DN, data are packetized and each packet carries an address in the
header. The address has local jurisdiction, not end-to-end jurisdiction.
• As in CSN, all packets follow the same path established during the
connection
• VCN is normally implemented in the data link layer, while CSN is in
physical layer and DN in the network layer

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 Virtual-Circuit Network

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 Addressing
• Two types of addressing in a virtual-circuit network: global and local
(virtual-circuit identifier: VCI)
• Global address is used only to create a VCI
• Virtual Circuit Identifier

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 Three Phases
• Data transfer phase, setup phase, teardown phase
• Switch and tables in a virtual-circuit network

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 Data Transfer Phases
• Source-to-destination data transfer in a virtual-circuit network

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 Setup Phases: Setup Request

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 Setup Phases: Acknowledgement

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 Delay in a Virtual-Circuit Network
• In virtual-circuit switching, all packets belonging to the same source
and destination travel the same path; but the packets may arrive at the
destination with different delays if resource allocation is on demand.

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 Structure of Circuit Switches
• Space-division switch or time-division switch
• Space-division: crossbar switch, multistage switch

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 Crossbar Switches: Problem

• The number of switches is huge.

– connect n inputs by m output -- require n * m
crosspoint.
– Ex : 1000 input, 1000 output → 1,000,000 crosspoint

• Inefficient
– fewer than 25% of the crosspoints are in use at a given
time.

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 Multistage Switch
• Solution to the limitation of the crossbar switch

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 Design of a Three-Stage Switch
• Three steps
– Divide the N input lines into groups, each of n lines. For each
group, use one crossbar of size n x k, where k is the number of
crossbars in the middle stage
– Use k crossbars, each of size (N/n) x (N/n) in the middle stage
– Use N/n crossbars, each of size k x n at the third stage
• N/n(n x k) + k(N/n x N/n) + N/n(k x n) = 2kN + k(N/n)2
• In a three-stage switch, the total number of crosspoints is
2kN + k(N/n)2 which is much smaller than the number of
crosspoints in a single-stage switch (N2).

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 Multistage Switch: Example 1
• Design a three-stage, 200 × 200 switch (N = 200) with k =
4 and n = 20.

• In the first stage we have N/n or 10 crossbars, each of size

20 × 4. In the second stage, we have 4 crossbars, each of
size 10 × 10. In the third stage, we have 10 crossbars,
each of size 4 × 20. The total number of crosspoints is 2kN
+ k(N/n)2, or 2000 crosspoints. This is 5 percent of the
number of crosspoints in a single-stage switch (200 × 200
= 40,000).

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 Multistage Switches: Blocking

• Advantage: The number of crosspoints

• Disadvantage: blocking
• Clos criterion: condition of nonblocking
– n = (N/2)1/2
– k > 2n – 1
– Crosspoints ≥ 4N [(2N)1/2 – 1]

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 Multistage Switch: Example 2
• Redesign the previous three-stage, 200 × 200 switch, using the Clos
criteria with a minimum number of crosspoints.
.
• We let n = (200/2)1/2, or n = 10. We calculate k = 2n − 1 = 19. In the
first stage, we have 200/10, or 20, crossbars, each with 10 × 19
crosspoints. In the second stage, we have 19 crossbars, each with 10 ×
10 crosspoints. In the third stage, we have 20 crossbars each with 19
× 10 crosspoints. The total number of crosspoints is 20(10 × 19) +
19(10 × 10) + 20(19 ×10) = 9500.

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 TDM, with and without TSI

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 Time-Slot Interchange

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 Time- and Space-Division Switch
Combination
• Space division: instantaneous, crosspoints
• Time division: no crosspoint, processing delay
• Space-and time-division switching combinations
take advantage of the best of both
– TST(time-space-time)
– TSST(time-space-space-time)
– STTS(space-time-time-space)

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 TST Switch

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 Structure of Packet Switch
• Four components: input port, output port, routing processor, switching
fabric

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 Input/Output Port

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 Structure of Packet Switch
• Routing processor: network layer functions
– Table lookup: searching the routing table by destination address
• Switching Fabric
– Crossbar switch
– Banyan switch
– Batcher-Banyan switch

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 Banyan Switch
• Multistage switch with microswitches at each stage that route the
packets based on the output port represented as a binary string

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 Example of Routing in a Banyan Switch

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 Batcher-Banyan Switch
• Problem in Banyan switch: possibility of internal collision
– Solve it by sorting the arriving packets based on their destination port

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