Physical Layer Switching

Network

Switching Network
A network is a set of connected devices
We have multiple devices
How to connect them to make one-to-one

communication possible
Solution:
Using topology

But

it is impractical and wasteful when

applied to very large
network
A better solution is switching
A switched networkconsists of a series of
interlinked nodes,
called switches

Simple Switched Network

 The devices attached to the network may be referred to as

stations or end nodes. The stations may be computers,
terminals, telephones, or other communicating devices

The switching devices whose purpose is to provide

communication refer as nodes or switch nodes.

The switching nodes are not concerned with the content of

the data

They provide a switching facility that will move the data

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from node to node until they reach their destination.

Switching Network
Three different switching

technologies
Circuit switching
Message switching
Packet switching

Circuit Switching
Dedicated communication path between two

stations
a connection called a circuit is set up between

two devices, which is used for the whole

communication.
That path is a connected sequence of links between network nodes
On each physical link a logical channel is dedicated to connection

Three phases
Setup Phase (Establish dedicated channel

between the devices)

Data Transfer Phase
Teardown Phase (Disconnect)
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Circuit Switching

Circuit Switching
Fixed bandwidth
Guaranteed capacity
Inefficient
Channel capacity dedicated for

duration of connection
If no data, capacity wasted
Set up (connection) takes time
Once connected, transfer is

transparent
Developed for voice traffic (phone)
also used for digital data
Not suitable for brusty traffic
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Example
Circuit switching was developed to handle voice traffic but is now also used for

data traffic. The best-known example of a circuit-switching network is the

public telephone network
Subscribers: The devices that attach to the network, typically telephones, but
the percentage of data traffic increases year by year.
Subscriber line: The link between the subscriber and the network, also
referred to as the subscriber loop or local loop, mostly using twisted-pair wire.
Exchanges: The switching centers in the network. A switching center that
directly supports subscribers is known as an end office.
Trunks: The branches between exchanges. Trunks carry multiple voicefrequency circuits using either FDM or synchronous TDM
Subscribers connect directly to an end office, which switches traffic between
subscribers and between a subscriber and other exchanges
The other exchanges are responsible for routing and switching traffic between
end offices
If two subscribers connect to different end offices, a circuit between them
consists of a chain of circuits through one or more intermediate offices.

Public Circuit
Switched
Network

Circuit Establishment

Message Switching
In telecommunications, message switching

was the precursor of packet switching, where

messages were routed in their entirety, one
hop at a time.
No physical path is established in advance
between sender and receiver.
When the sender has a block of data to be
sent,
it is 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
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retransmitted

Message Switching
If message is large it monopolizes the link
Better way to divide the message into

smaller parts

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Packet Switching

Advantages

line efficiency

single link shared by many packets over time

packets queued and transmitted as fast as
possible

data rate conversion

stations connects to local node at own speed

nodes buffer data if required to equalize rates

packets accepted even when network is

busy
priorities can be used

station breaks long message into packets, packets

sent one at a time to the network packets can be
handled in two ways

Datagram Swithcing
In the datagram approach, each packet is treated

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independently, with no reference to packets that have

gone before
So the packets, each with the same destination address,
do not all follow the same route, and they may arrive
out of sequence at the exit point
The exit node restores the packets to their original
order before delivering them to the destination. In some
datagram networks, it is up to the destination rather
than the exit node to do the reordering.
If a packet-switching node crashes momentarily, all of
its queued packets may be lost. Again, it is up to either
the exit node or the destination to detect the loss of a

Datagram
Diagram

Virtual circuit approach

In the virtual circuit approach, a preplanned route is

established before any packets are sent

A transmitted packet is buffered at each node, and
queued for output over a line, while other packets on
other virtual circuits may share the use of the line
The difference from the datagram approach is that,
with virtual circuits, the node need not make a routing
decision for each packet. It is made only once for all
packets using that virtual circuit.

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Virtual
Circuit
Diagram

Virtual Circuits v Datagram

virtual circuits
network can provide sequencing and error

control
packets are forwarded more quickly
less reliable
datagram
no call setup phase
more flexible
more reliable

Packet
Size

Circuit v Packet Switching

performance depends on various delays
propagation delay
transmission time
node delay

range of other characteristics, including:

transparency
amount of overhead

Message Switching

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(a) Circuit Switching (b) Message Switching (c) Packet

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Blocking or Non-blocking
blocking network
may be unable to connect stations because

all paths are in use

used on voice systems
non-blocking network
permits all stations to connect at once
used for some data connections

Circuit switching can use either of two

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technologies: the space-division switch or

the time-division switch
In space-division switching, the paths in the
circuit are separated from one another
spatially(Physically)
A crossbar switch connects n inputs to m
outputs in a grid, using electronic micro
switches (transistors) at each cross point
The major limitation of this design is the
number of cross points required
The solution to the limitations of the
crossbar switch is the multistage switch,

8-4 STRUCTURE OF A
SWITCH

Crossbar switch with three inputs and four outputs

We divide the N input lines into groups,

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each of n lines. For each group, we use one

crossbar of size n x k, where k is the
number of crossbars in the middle stage.
In other words, the first stage has N/n
crossbars of n x k crosspoints.
We use k crossbars, each of size (N/n) x
(N/n) in the middle stage.
We use N/n crossbars, each of size k x n at
the third stage.
The multistage switch has one drawbackblocking during periods of heavy traffic
Clos investigated the condition of

Multistage switch

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).

Example

Design a three-stage, 200 200 switch (N = 200) with

k = 4 and n = 20.

Example

Design a three-stage, 200 200 switch (N = 200) with

k = 4 and n = 20.
Solution
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).

According to the Clos criterion:

n = (N/2)1/2
k > 2n 1
Crosspoints 4N [(2N)1/2 1]

Redesign the previous three-stage, 200 200 switch, using the Clos
criteria with a minimum number of crosspoints.
Solution
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.

Time-slot interchange

Time Division Switching

modern digital systems use intelligent control of

space & time division elements
use digital time division techniques to set up and
maintain virtual circuits
partition low speed bit stream into pieces that
share higher speed stream
individual pieces manipulated by control logic to
flow from input to output

 The advantage of space-division switching

is that it is instantaneous. Its disadvantage

is the number of crosspoints required to
make space-division switching acceptable in
terms of blocking
The advantage of time-division switching is
that it needs no crosspoints. Its
disadvantage, in the case of TSI, is that
processing each connection creates delays.
Each time slot must be stored by the RAM,
then retrieved and passed on
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Time-space-time switch

A switch used in a packet-switched network

has a different structure from a switch used

in a circuit-switched network.
A packet switch has four components: input
ports, output ports, the routing processor,
and the switching fabric.
An input port performs the physical and
data link functions of the packet switch like
bits are constructed from the received signal.
packet is decapsulated from the frame
errors are detected and corrected
the packet and sent to the switching fabric.
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The output port performs the same

functions as the input port, but in the

reverse order
Switching fabric to move the packet from
the input queue to the output queue
In the past, when a packet switch was
actually a dedicated computer, the memory
of the computer or a bus was used as the
switching fabric
Today, packet switches are specialized
mechanisms that use a variety of switching
fabrics like crossbar switch, banyan switch
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Packet switch components

Input port

Output port

A banyan switch is a multistage switch with

microswitches at each stage that route the

packets based on the output port
represented as a binary string.
The problem with the banyan switch is the
possibility of internal collision
This problem can solve by sorting the
arriving packets based on their destination
port.

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A banyan switch

Examples of routing in a banyan switch

Thank
You

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