What Do You Mean By "Internet As A Packet Switched Network"�? Also Explain The Types Of Switching.

The internet, at the network layer is actually a packet switched network. In general the switching can be divided into two brad categories.

First is the circuit switching and the other is the packet switching. Packet switching itself uses either the virtual circuit approach or datagram approach. In the circuit switching, a physical link is dedicated between the source and the destination. In this case data can be sent as a stream of the bits without any need for packetizing. On the other hand in packet switching, the data are transmitted in discrete units of potentially variable length blocks known as packets. The maximum length of the packets is established by the concerning network. The maximum length of the packet is established by the network. Longer transmissions are broken up into different multiple packets. Each packet contains not only data but also a header with some control information such as priority codes, source and the destination addresses. The packets are then sent over the network, node to node. At each node, the packet is stored for a very short period of time before being routed according to the information in its header. There are two main and popular approaches to the packet switching, one is the datagram approach and other is the virtual circuit approach.