Talk:Packet switching

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Computing: Networking Mid‑importance

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Telecommunications Mid‑importance

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This article is based on material taken from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing prior to 1 November 2008 and incorporated under the "relicensing" terms of the GFDL, version 1.3 or later.

Redirects: Packet Switching, packet switching, packet mode, packet oriented, packet based.

History of packet switching

Please refer to the Talk:Packet switching/OriginsArchive for the lengthy discussion that led to the baselining of the respective roles of Paul Baran, Donald Davies, and Leonard Kleinrock in the history of packet switching.

Other networks (non-ARPANET/INTERNET)

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)[reply]

No one is stopping you from adding in these other networks... Cburnett 20:23, 14 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

As of 30 August 2013 Packet-switched network is now a redirect to this article. ~Kvng (talk) 23:16, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]

There's a paragraph about it today. Also Packet switching § X.25 era. ~Kvng (talk) 23:15, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Octopus system

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)[reply]

I agree it is not really clear what's going on but there is some discussion of packets in one of the sources ([1]). ~Kvng (talk) 23:40, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

List of packet-switched networks

Propose to spin out the section "Packet-switched networks" to a new article List of packet-switched networks. Whizz40 (talk) 23:20, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]