โ Scribed by Paul Baran
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
According to the Data Communications Glossary 1 packet switching is: ... a data transmission technique whereby user information is segmented and routed in discrete data envelopes called packets, each with its own appended control information for routing, sequencing and error checking; allows a communication channel to be shared by many users, each using the circuit only for the time required to transmit a single packet; describing a network that operates in this manner.
While proposed 40 years ago this scheme was initially regarded as implausible, unworkable and at best an unnecessary complex way of building communications networks. Now essentially all new communications networks, including the Internet, incorporate the concepts of packet switching. The once wild idea has become so commonplace that we take it for granted, like the engine under the hood of a car. It is there, and it works. One does not have to know how or why it works to drive a car.
For the few curious about packet switching origins, its motivation was to fill a Cold War defense need: to build a robust communications network to withstand destruction of many nodes by an enemy, and allow the physically surviving nodes to intercommunicate.
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