Difference between Circuit Switching and Packet Switching
| Circuit Switching | Packet Switching |
|---|---|
| In-circuit switching has 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 knows the entire path address which is provided by the source. | In Packet switching, each data unit just knows the final destination address intermediate path is decided by the routers. |
| In-Circuit switching, data is processed at the source system only | In Packet switching, data is processed at all intermediate nodes including the source system. |
| The delay between data units in circuit switching is uniform. | The delay between data units in packet switching is not uniform. |
| Resource reservation is the feature of circuit switching because the 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 is 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 the connection establishment phase because there might be a case where a request is being made for a channel but the channel is already occupied. | Congestion can occur during the data transfer phase, a 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, the charge depends on time and distance, not on traffic in the network. | In Packet switching, the charge is based on the number of bytes and connection time. |
| Recording of packets is never possible in circuit switching. | Recording of packets 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 |
| Call setup is required in circuit switching. | No call setup is required in packet switching. |
| In-circuit switching each packet follows the same route. | In packet switching packets can follow any route. |
| The circuit switching network is implemented at the physical layer. | Packet switching is implemented at the datalink layer and network layer |
| Circuit switching requires simple protocols for delivery. | Packet switching requires complex protocols for delivery. |
Please write comments if you find anything incorrect, or if you want to share more information about the topic discussed above.
.png)