SWITCHING

A network is a set of connected devices. Whenever we have multiple devices, we have to connect them to make one-to-one communication possible.

1. One solution is to make a point-to-point connection between each pair of devices (a mesh topology) or between a central device and every other device (a star topology). These methods, however, are impractical and wasteful when applied to very large networks.
2. A better solution is switching. A switched network consists of a series of interlinked nodes, called switches. Switches are devices capable of creating temporary connections between two or more devices linked to the switch.

Switched network

Types of Switched Networks

We can then divide today's networks into three broad categories:

1. Circuit-switched networks,
2. Packet-switched networks, and
3. Message-switched.

Packet-switched networks can further be divided into two

subcategories-virtual-circuit networks and datagram networks.

Taxonomy of switched networks