Packet Switching

Packet switching is the technique of dividing information to be sent into small units or packets. These packets are transmitted across the network and can follow different paths to the intended recipient and once they get there they are compiled into the initial message or data flow. Packet switching is a common technique that is employed in the current data communications to enhance the channel utilisation and quality of transports in the network.

Key Concepts of Packet Switching

1. Data Packets: In packet switching, data is divided into small units to be transmitted and are referred to as packets. A packet usually consist of some part of the original data along with the control information like source and destination addresses and sequence numbers and error control information. This structure enables the network to work at the packet level that is, to handle and route the packets individually.
2. Independent Routing: In a packet switched network the packets are sent in isolation from one another. They are able to navigate through the network in different ways depending on the state of the network for instance congestion or link outage. The network’s routers and switches decide the most effective path for each packet at any given time thus ensuring that the available bandwidth is well utilized.
3. Reassembly at the Destination: When the packets reach their destination they are reordered to reconstruct the original message or data stream that the packets are carrying. Each of the packet contains sequence numbers in order to facilitate proper reassembly of the data even if the packets are received in a different order than they were sent.
4. Dynamic Bandwidth Allocation: Packet switching is efficient in the use of the network resources where several communication sessions can use the same resources at different times. This is because packets from different sources can be transmitted over the same network link and since the network link can support more users and data streams at the same time thus making the network to have better bandwidth utilization.
5. Error Handling and Retransmission: Packet switched networks may also have provisions for error control. Since a packet may be lost or corrupted during the transmission, the system can ask for a transmission of that specific packet only instead of the whole message thus making the transmission more efficient and effective.

Common Use Cases for Packet Switching

1. Internet Communication: Packet switching is an essential element of the Internet as it has to transfer a large amount of information to millions of devices. Model such as the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) is founded on the packet switching technology to facilitate effective and secure data transmission across the world wide web.
2. VoIP and Video Conferencing: VoIP and video conferencing applications are some of the popular applications that employ packet switching when transmitting media files including voice and video. These applications are able to provide high quality voice and video communication by dividing these streams into packets.
3. File Transfer and Downloading: Packet switching technique is employed in file transfer protocols for example FTP and content delivery networks for example CDN in transmitting of large data. It is divided into packets which makes downloading faster and more efficient regardless of the network that is being used.
4. Mobile Networks: Current mobile communication networks for instance the 4G LTE and the newly emerging 5G also employ packet switching to transfer data between the mobile devices and the network. This approach makes it possible to avoid the wasting of the limited bandwidth that is available in the wireless networks and at the same support the large number of users who are concurrently connected.
5. Cloud Computing and Data Centers: Packet switching is very crucial in cloud computing and data centers that focuses on transmitting a large number of data packets from one server to another, another storage system or an end user. This makes it possible to design and implement elastic and scalable data management which is important in cloud computing.

Advantages of Packet Switching

1. Efficient Bandwidth Usage: Packet switching enable multiple data streams to share the same network infrastructure thus improving the utilization of available network capacity. Such an approach enables the efficient usage of resources without the necessity to allocate specific channels for their functioning.
2. Scalability: Packet-switched networks are very scalable; this means that it is very easy to add new users and devices on the network without having to compromise the network’s efficiency. The network is capable of adapting to the different traffic conditions since it has the ability of dynamically routing the packets.
3. Resilience and Reliability: As the packets can travel through different paths, the packet-switched networks are less susceptible to failure. Since the path which a packet has to follow may be blocked either due to congestion or some hardware failure, there are other paths which are available to reroute the packet and thus maintain the communication.
4. ‍Cost-Effectiveness: Packet switching minimises the costs of exclusive leased lines as the resources of the network are used by several consumers. This results to reduced costs on the infrastructure and cheap communication services for the consumers.
5. Flexibility: Packet switching is a good method of supporting different communication types such as voice, video and data. This characteristic provides the same network infrastructure to support various applications and services hence making it a suitable option in the current communication systems.

Disadvantages and Considerations

1. Latency: Nonetheless, packet switching has a disadvantage of latency; packets might follow different routes and if the network is busy, it is congested. This situation is disadvantageous for real-time applications such as online games and video streaming.
2. Packet Loss: Packet switching occurs in a network and sometimes packets may be lost due to congestion, errors among other problems. However, retransmission methods can help in the recovery of the lost packets and this may cause delay as well as decrease in throughput.
3. Jitter: One of the problems with packet switched networks is the variation in packet arrival times known as jitter. Jitter is a severe problem in applications which demand a steady and consecutive data flow, for example, video conferencing or VoIP.
4. Complexity: Packet switched networks on the other hand, are more complex since they rely on protocols and infrastructure to control the dynamic routing and re-assembly of packets. Such topology may make the network difficult to implement, maintain and debug.
5. Quality of Service (QoS) Challenges: Maintaining quality of service (QoS) in a packet-switched network is not easy due to the fact that traffic types such as voice, video and data may share the same network. Network administrators must ensure that quality of service is being applied to the network in order to ensure that important streams of traffic do not degrade.

Conclusion

In essence, Packet Switching is defined as a technique that involves subdivision of data to be transmitted over a digital network into packets, with a view of enhancing the effectiveness of the channel usage and improve on the data transmission. It is the basis of numerous current-day operative communication systems such as the Internet, Mobile Networks, and Cloud Computing. Packet switching has several advantages that include efficient utilization of the available bandwidth, scalability, reliability and affordability. However, it also comes with the problems such as delay, loss of packets, and variation in delay time which has to be overcome for proper and efficient communication. However, the packet switching technique is still very much useful in the modern world to transfer data at a very high speed, flexibility and reliability.