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3.7 Conclusions and summary of contributions

In this chapter, I have argued that, for a given network capacity, users would experience little difference in performance if circuit switching were used instead of packet switching at the core of the Internet. However, this result is not extensible to LAN environments, since big variances of flow sizes in the Internet produce link blocking by circuits, and this in turn makes circuit switching deliver a very poor response time.

The main opportunity for circuit switches comes from their simplicity, and therefore they can be made faster, smaller and to consume less power. As a result, the capacity of the network can be increased without decrementing end-user performance by using more circuit switching in the core. In this thesis, I recommend a network architecture that uses circuit switching in the core and packet switching in the edges, so as to meet Internet's challenging demands for high aggregate bandwidth and low end-user response time at a reasonable cost. This hybrid architecture is shown in Figure 3.12.


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Next: 4. TCP Switching Up: 3. Response Time of Previous: 3.6 Discussion
Copyright © Pablo Molinero-Fernández 2002-3