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In Circuit Switching, a dedicated channel is established for a single connection where the sender and receiver can communicate during the communication session.
In circuit switching, whenever devices communicate with another device, a dedicated communication path (circuit) is established in them over the network.
It is a switching technique that creates a pre-specific route between the sender and receiver and this route is reserved for both these devices as long as the connection is active. Both devices are connected through this specific route and data transfer can also do only through a specific route. Other devices cannot use this specific route for data transmission because this specific route is reserved.
This type of network switching was designed and used in the early analog telephone network.We used circuit switching to physically connect devices in the telephone network.
Phases of Circuits Switching
- Establish a circuit
- Transfer the data
- Disconnect the circuit
Simple Example of Telephone Network: First we call the other user, once he receives the call, the connection is established and both can communicate with each other after if one of the user disconnects the phone, the circuits disconnect.
Advantages of Circuit Switching
- A dedicated link is established between both devices which provides a guaranteed data transmission.
- Once the connection is established between the sender and receiver , data can be transmitted without any delay because they are directly connected so no waiting at each switching.
- A dedicated continuous data transmission path is established between the sender and receiver so this switching method is suitable only for long continuous transmission.
Disadvantages of Circuit Switching
- The main disadvantage of this switching method is that once a dedicated path is established then this path becomes reserved and other devices cannot user this path .
- This method does not properly utilize system resources as resources allocated for the entire duration , these are not available to other connections.
- A dedicated continuous data transmission channel requires more bandwidth .
- Before the actual data transfer, a dedicated path has to be established ,it takes a long time to establish the path.
