What is "packet switching"

n. (context computing English) a means of directing digitally encoded information in a communication network from its source to its destination, in which messages may be divided into smaller entities called packets, each of which travels independently through the network in paths based on moment to moment route decisions made by the node through which they pass.

Packet switching is a digital networking communications method that groups all transmitted data into suitably sized blocks, called packets, which are transmitted via a medium that may be shared by multiple simultaneous communication sessions. Packet switching increases network efficiency, robustness and enables technological convergence of many applications operating on the same network.

Packets are composed of a header and payload. Information in the header is used by networking hardware to direct the packet to its destination where the payload is extracted and used by application software.

Starting in the late 1950s, American computer scientist Paul Baran developed the concept Distributed Adaptive Message Block Switching with the goal to provide a fault-tolerant, efficient routing method for telecommunication messages as part of a research program at the RAND Corporation, funded by the US Department of Defense. This concept contrasted and contradicted the then-established principles of pre-allocation of network bandwidth, largely fortified by the development of telecommunications in the Bell System. The new concept found little resonance among network implementers until the independent work of British computer scientist Donald Davies at the National Physical Laboratory (United Kingdom) in the late 1960s. Davies is credited with coining the modern name packet switching and inspiring numerous packet switching networks in Europe in the decade following, including the incorporation of the concept in the early ARPANET in the United States.