Talk:Packet switching

message: I have made two changes to the initial sentence:
a] "are individually routed" changed to "are routed" recognizes that some virtual-call networks such as TYMNET, RCP and IPSANET used fixed routing.
b] changed "which might be shared by many other nodes" to "shared with other traffic". Nodes originate and receive little information. Most traffic is generated outside of nodes (perhaps by hosts or terminals which are attached to a node).Rdmoore6 16:14, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: 3 Sept 2006 edit of initial sentence

message: The article has little mention of packet switching networks other than ARPANET/Internet. Possible examples include GTE TELENET, Tymnet, X.25/X.75, Systems Network Architecture, IPSANET. The external links are devoid of references to these non-mainstream networks.Rdmoore6 20:52, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No one is stopping you from adding in these other networks... Cburnett 20:23, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm taking over Packet switched network for just this purpose. It was a redirect here, but had no links to it. I'll add a see also at the top, just in case. Ewlyahoocom 08:02, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Let me know if you need details on some of these. I was a network management architect for GTE TELENET and worked, at a detailed level, with Tymnet and SNA. Howard C. Berkowitz 19:44, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

text: Is there a good reason for having separate Packet switching and Packet-switched network articles? There is some indication that readers are having difficulty finding what they're looking for. --Kvng (talk) 15:43, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

text: It would be wonderful to see x.25 and the like added to the history section, given how seminal it in particular was. And arthritis and lack of knowledge are stoppipng me from adding it lol, but i believe it is important as the article reads as though pactet switching was entirely developed by arpanet. Alsobe cool to mention that packet switching mirrors traditional postal or courier service where CSD is more like train freight (even insofar as parcels can travel on a train part of the way).Mycosys (talk) 06:01, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Other networks (non-ARPANET/INTERNET)

message: In consideration of the banner notice, but still taking into consideration the above dialogue, I went ahead and edited the opening paragraphs into common language. The bulk of this new text is based on the more accessible description of packet switching already incorporated on the [circuit switching] wikipedia page. 
This edit seems to make the first bit of the article approachable for the common person. The remaining tech jargon in the article, while interesting and probably still useful, may benefit from more simplification, clarification and better organization, prior to recommending the article for quality upgrade. ThreePD (talk) 20:51, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Edited opening paragraph to more accessible language

message: I'm not sure this Octopus system (interesting as it is) is a real packet-switching system. The reference provided doesn't given enough details of the internal mechanisms involved to make a determination. What concerns me is that if we're going to include systems where a number of computers at one location are connected via links, if memory serves there were a number of systems like that from the late 50's on. I don't have time to research this point at the moment, but I think the earliest such system might have been the NBS PILOT system from '58 or so. And then there's SAGE - I seem to recall the centers talked to each other (and they were geographically disparate, to boot). The IBM ASP thing was another example of multiple independent machines coupled into a similar processing complex. And I seem to recall that Larry Roberts was hired by ARPA because he had prior experience (at Lincoln Labs) in getting computers to communicate over phone links. Etc, etc...
To me the determining factor would be things like 'were there real packets involved, i.e. blocks with headers that could direct the data to any element of the network' and 'could the packets take arbitrary paths from source to destination, including through a sequence of nodes, so link bandwidth was shared between all nodes'.  More limited inter-computer communication setups would not, IMO, count as packet networks. Noel (talk) 03:10, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Octopus system

message: Did it really happen at the same time, or did it precede US work?
*http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8498826.stm
"Roger Scantlebury, who worked with Dr Davies, presented the ideas about "packet switching" to a conference in the US, where they were picked up by the creators of the nascent Arpanet, the fledgling internet.
Does that mean Britain invented the internet? 
"Yes and no," said Mr Scantlebury. "Certainly the underlying technology of the internet, which is packet switching, we did invent.""
86.7.211.128 (talk) 14:26, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not sure what Scantlebury is talking about here. If you read  Baran's tome, it clearly is talking about packet switching as we know it today, and it equally clearly predates the UK work. The term 'packet switching' was clearly coined by Davies - perhaps the Beeb lost the distinction between 'term' and 'concept'? Noel (talk) 22:04, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  British work on packet switching 

message: The article has good information and describes exactly what packet switching does.  They are not any references or sources listed which makes the article unreliable even though the information may be correct. I plan on find references that will back this article and give it stability. References I plan to include are IT companies specializing in networking, other articles, textbooks, and websites.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dmcaldwell3 (talk • contribs) 17:20, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Good information, but unreliable due to lack to references

message: I don't think we need to have separate articles for the noun and verb forms of this topic. -—Kvng 13:06, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks! ~KvnG 13:52, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

text: The article's not really long enough to clearly merit a split. I've hidden stuff in the TOC. Does that help? ~KvnG 16:23, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
replies: text:  It helped, but... Length is not the only reason to merit a split. The long list of packet switching networks really detracts from having a clear, concise article on the topic. Noel (talk) 14:30, 1 March 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: That's usually resolved by splitting to something like List of packet-switched networks. I guess we're going the long way there. I don't oppose this but also don't think it is absolutely necessary. You probably should try to get consensus for it before proceeding. ~KvnG 15:53, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge from [[Packet-switched network]] 

message: "Packet switching is a digital networking communications method that groups all transmitted data - regardless of content, type, or structure - into suitably sized blocks, called packets."
That's not correct.
Packet switching does that, but *also* relays packets through multiple hops by switching them via a dynamically updated routing table (connectionless packet switching), trying to send different packets in parallel through different routes to improve throuput, and changing decisions as routine table changes to send each packet through the shortst-time path to ultimate destination, or by relaying intact packets consecutively over a fixed path (connection-oriented packet switching).
(Of course if you want to establish a TCP connection between two adjacent nodes, so that the packets travel only a single hop, for which there is only a single physical link (no redundant links), and where that single physical link incurs less transit time than any multi-hop route, then no actual switching occurs, all packets hopefully travel exactly the same route, along that single hop using that unique physical link. But the full TCP/IP protocol is used, routing tables are consulted AGAIN for each packet to make sure they go the shortest route, so in that sense they are still switched, albeit in a trivial way.)
By comparison, packet linking (more properly a "packet-link protocol") never forwards packets. Packets are built, sent on a single hop, and immediately decomposed and spliced into the TCP-like stream at the next-higher level of protocol.
For multi-hop TCP-like circuits, packets are disassembled, re-queued per byte, and new packets are assembled from the queue, at each relay point. The size of packets at each hop depends on data available in the queue feeding into this hop of this stream, and priority of this stream along this next hop compared to competing streams that need to share the same hop.
The PCNET protocol (circa 1977, designed by Dave Calkins, Mike Wilber, Peter Deutsch, and myself Robert Maas) was an example of a packet-link protocol, which specifically had transparency for binary-octet data.
(Not to be confused with IBM's "PCNET" protocol, invented a year or so later, which was unrelated except for usurpting our copyrighted name without consent of our copyright holder, namely PCC = People's Computer Corporation of Menlo Park, California.)
DIALNET, Kermit, XMODEM, etc. were also packet-link protocols, none of which however provided binary-data transparency IIRC.
Unfortunately, PCNET never had a large enough set of nodes, with some nodes having multiple phone lines with multiple modems, to warrent implementing any stream-relay nodes, so that part of the protocol was never formally specified and implemented.
For multi-hop e-mail, we used store-and-forward of entire messages (much as UUCP-mail, and later USENET newsgroup messages, including InterNet/UUCP gateway conventions using addresses such as "infmx!cathl@uunet.uu.net"), rather than carrying message live over end-to-end multi-hop stream as SMTP typically does over TCP/IP nowadays.
Both packet switching, and packet linking, are sub-types of packet mode communication, as opposed to circuit switching.
I don't know whether PPP allows forwarding of packets (multi-hop), in which case it's properly a packet switching protocol, or it allows only single-hop streaming, with stream-data re-queued at the boundary between PPP and TCP/IP, in which case PPP is a packet link protocol, or whether each PPP packet is mapped exactly to one TCP/IP packet at the dialup-server end, in which case it's still packet mode communication but in neither sub-type packet switching nor packet linking, thus a third sub-type of packet mode communication.
"Packet switching contrasts with another principal networking paradigm, circuit switching" is also wrong. It's packet mode communication, a super-type of both packet switching and packet linking, which directly contrasts with circuit switching, as peers/sisters in the hierarchy/cladogram.
"Packet mode communication may be utilized with or without intermediate forwarding nodes (packet switches or routers)." -- Correct.
Google search for "packet link protocol" finds mention but no definition:
www.all-acronyms.com/Packet+Link+Protocol
"All definitions for PACKET LINK PROTOCOL acronym or abbreviation have been removed or haven't been published yet."
www.all-acronyms.com/reverse/Packet%20Link%20Protocol
"PACKET LINK PROTOCOL has not been found in any definition"
Is there some more standard jargon for what I've been calling "packet link" protocol since circa 1980 (when it became necessary to distinguish PCNET from the newly-proposed TCP/IP when trying to explain it to people), and I'm the only person still using the "packet link" jargon because I don't yet know the new standard jargon for the same concept?
198.144.192.45 (talk) 09:44, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Incorrect definition of term "Packet switching" in intro 

message: The animation is 8.9 MB - that's hardly appropriate. It's nowhere informative enough to justify that kind of bandwidth.
76.178.147.142 (talk) 16:18, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Animation is inappropriate file size 

message: I came here to learn about packet switching, so I'm no expert. But the starting message and the received message are different! Surely that's not right!? 212.62.5.158 (talk) 16:03, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: The animation shows that the order of messages can be changed through a packet switched network. The receiving device must reorder the data to reconstruct the message. ~Kvng (talk) 17:30, 20 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Animation contains glaring error 

message: I have removed this tangential and difficult-to-traverse section from the article. I have looked at X.25 and Frame Relay as potential homes and I am not convinced it would be helpful in either location. ~Kvng (talk) 14:11, 20 August 2019 (UTC)
thread_title: X.25 vs. Frame Relay