Explain typical packet switching network configuration.

Packet Switching: In packet switching the nodes handle greatly smaller data length than are determined in message switching. This message is divided before transmission in a series of sections of data termed as data packets having a length of little thousand bits. This method has a number of advantages. Initially, the short packets experience minimum delay in progress by the network. The method utilized is even a store and forward process but because the packets are small they are rapidly copied by each node and needs little memory space. Second by appending a sequence number to each packet and also its destination address the nodes are capable to interleave packets from some various sources and this leads to more efficient utilization of the transmission media. Figure demonstrates how this interleaving can function.

Interleaving of packets in network

Two approaches are applied to the technique in which the stream of mixed packets is handled through nodes. These concepts are termed as datagram and the virtual circuit.