When is circuit switching more efficient than packet switching and vice versa?
The two types of switching techniques had their roots in different technologies. Circuit switching is used by the telephone companies to service voice traffic. Voice traffic must be real-time, makes modest demand upon bandwidth and other resources, has little variation between average and peak resource needs (per connection), and is tolerant of transmission errors. Data traffic does not require real-time service, places a greater demand upon communication resources (bandwidth), has a much greater variation between peak and average resource needs, and requires essentially error free channels. Packet switching was developed to service data communication.
