Difference between Circuit Switching and Packet Switching
| Circuit Switching | Packet Switching |
|---|---|
| In circuit switching there are 3 phases: i) Connection Establishment. ii) Data Transfer. iii) Connection Released. | In Packet switching directly data transfer takes place. |
| In circuit switching, each data unit know the entire path address which is provided by the source. | In Packet switching, each data unit just know the final destination address intermediate path is decided by the routers. |
| In Circuit switching, data is processed at source system only | In Packet switching, data is processed at all intermediate node including source system. |
| Delay between data units in circuit switching is uniform. | Delay between data units in packet switching is not uniform. |
| Resource reservation is the feature of circuit switching because path is fixed for data transmission. | There is no resource reservation because bandwidth is shared among users. |
| Circuit switching is more reliable. | Packet switching is less reliable. |
| Wastage of resources are more in Circuit Switching | Less wastage of resources as compared to Circuit Switching |
| It is not a store and forward technique. | It is a store and forward technique. |
| Transmission of the data is done by the source. | Transmission of the data is done not only by the source, but also by the intermediate routers. |
| Congestion can occur during connection establishment time, there might be a case will requesting for channel the channel is already occupied. | Congestion can occur during data transfer phase, large number of packets comes in no time. |
| Circuit switching is not convenient for handling bilateral traffic. | Packet switching is suitable for handling bilateral traffic. |
| In Circuit switching, charge depend on time and distance, not on traffic in the network. | In Packet switching, charge is based on the number of bytes and connection time. |
| Recording of packet is never possible in circuit switching. | While recording of packet is possible in packet switching. |
| In Circuit Switching there is a physical path between the source and the destination | In Packet Switching there is no physical path between the source and the destination |
| Circuit Switching does not support store and forward transmission | Packet Switching supports store and forward transmission |
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