Survey of unified switching techniques for integrated-service networks

The authors survey proposals for future integrated-service networks, with emphasis on unified approaches which employ a single switching technique across the entire network bandwidth. It is noted that the two most promising unified approaches are burst and fast packet switching. Burst switching is a circuit switching-based approach which allocates channel bandwidth to a connection only during the transmission of bursts of information. Fast packet switching is a packet switching-based approach which can be characterized by very high transmission rates on network links and simple, hardwired protocols which match the high bandwidth of the network. Both approaches are proposed as possible implementations for integrated-service networks. The authors also briefly examine N-ISDN (narrowband integrated services digital network), and discuss the key performance issues found in fast packet switching