In networking communications, packet switching is more flexible than Research Paper

In networking communications, packet switching is more flexible than circuit switching because of the full potential bandwidth, error free data transfer and multiple communication sessions - Research Paper Example In circuit switching, one path exists which is dedicated to facilitating communication between two stations. This communication path consists of connected links (in a sequence) between different network nodes. Communication that takes place through circuit switching occurs in three phases: Data Transfer, Circuit Establishment and Circuit Disconnect (Furukawa, et al., 2010). Circuit establishment takes place on a link-by-link basis. It involves the connection of routes and allocation of resources. On the other hand, the circuit disconnect phase involves the withdrawal of the resources previously allocated. The switches have to know how they would find the route that would lead them to the destination. Further, the switches must determine a method of allocating the bandwidth that would help in the establishment of a connection. Another name for the bandwidth is Channel (Shao, Jones & Melhem, 2009). One of the properties of circuit switching makes it less preferable to packet switching is that circuit switching is inefficient. The channel assigns and dedicates the whole of its capacity during the entire time of a connection (Furukawa, et al., 2010). This means that in the even that there is no data going through the channel, the capacity of the channel goes to waste. This makes circuit switching to perform below the desired efficiency levels. The second property is the delay associated with circuit switching. Circuit switching has a long initial delay (Sun, et al, 2013). The time that this type of switching takes to establish a circuit to start the process of communication is long. In addition to that, even after the establishment of a circuit, circuit switching has delays in data transmission. After the establishment of the circuit, the transmission of information takes place at a fixed rate. Because the rate of data transmission is