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Unit 6 Network Communication

6.1 Two Approaches to Network Communication

网络通信的两种途径

Whether they provide connections between one computer and another or between terminals and computers, communication networks can be divided into two basic types：circuit-switched (sometimes called connection oriented) and packet-switched ( sometimes called connectionless).

无论是在一台计算机和另一台计算机之间还是在终端和计算机之间提供连接，通信网络都可以分为两种基本类型：电路交换（有时称为面向连接）和分组交换（有时也称为无连接）。

Circuit-switched networks operate by forming a dedicated connection (circuit) between two points.

电路交换网络通过在两点之间形成专用连接（电路）来操作

The U.S. telephone system uses circuit switching technology-a telephone call establishes a circuit from the originating phone through the local switching office, across trunk lines, to a remote switching office, and finally to the destination telephone.

美国电话系统使用电路交换技术——一个电话呼叫建立了一个电路，从始发电话经过本地交换局，穿过干线，到达远程交换局，最后到达目的地电话。

While a circuit is in place, the phone equipment samples the microphone repeatedly, encodes the samples digitally, and transmits them across the circuit to the receiver.

当电路就位时，电话设备会重复对麦克风进行采样，对采样进行数字编码，并通过电路将其传输到接收器。

The sender is guaranteed that the samples can be delivered and reproduced because the circuit provides a guaranteed data path of 64 kbps(thousand bits per second) , the rate needed to send digitized voice.

由于电路提供了64kbps（千比特每秒）的保证数据路径，即发送数字化语音所需的速率，因此保证了发送器可以传送和再现样本。

The advantage of circuit switching lies in its guaranteed capacity: once a circuit is established, no other network activity will decrease the capacity of the circuit.

电路交换的优点在于其有保证的容量：一旦建立了电路，没有其他网络活动会降低电路的容量。

One disadvantage of circuit switching is cost: circuit costs are fixed, independent of traffic.

电路交换的一个缺点是成本：电路成本是固定的，与业务无关。

For example, one pays a fixed rate for a phone call, even when the two parties do not talk.

例如，即使双方不说话，也要为一个电话支付固定的费用。

Packet-switched networks, the type usually used to connect computers, take an entirely different approach.

通常用于连接计算机的分组交换网络采用了完全不同的方法。

In a packet-switched network, data to be transferred across a network is divided into small pieces called packets that are multiplexed onto high capacity intermachine connections.

在分组交换网络中，要在网络上传输的数据被划分为称为分组的小块，这些小块被复用到高容量的机器间连接上。

 A packet, which usually contains only a few hundred bytes of data, carries identification that enables the network hardware to know how to send it to the specified destination.

数据包通常只包含几百字节的数据，它携带的标识使网络硬件能够知道如何将其发送到指定的目的地。

For example, a large file to be transmitted between two machines must be broken into many packets that are sent across the network one at a time.

例如，要在两台机器之间传输的一个大文件必须分解成许多数据包，这些数据包一次一个地通过网络发送。

The network hardware delivers the packets to the specified destination, where software reassembles them into a single file again.

网络硬件将数据包传送到指定的目的地，在那里软件将它们重新组装成一个文件。

The chief advantage of packet-switching is that multiple communications among computers can proceed concurrently, with intermachine connections shared by all pairs of machines that are communicating.

分组交换的主要优点是计算机之间的多个通信可以同时进行，所有通信的机器对共享机器间连接。

The disadvantage, of course, is that as activity increases, a given pair of communicating computers receives less of the network capacity.

当然，缺点是，随着活动的增加，给定的一对通信计算机接收的网络容量会减少。

That is, whenever a packet switched network becomes overloaded, computers using the network must wait before they can send additional packets.

也就是说，每当数据包交换网络过载时，使用该网络的计算机必须等待才能发送额外的数据包。

Despite the potential drawback of not being able to guarantee network capacity, packet-switched networks have become extremely popular.

尽管不能保证网络容量的潜在缺点，分组交换网络已经变得非常流行。

The motivations for adopting packet switching are cost and performance.

采用分组交换的动机是成本和性能。

Because multiple machines can share the network hardware, fewer connections are required and cost is kept low.

因为多台机器可以共享网络硬件，所以所需的连接更少，成本也很低。

 Because engineers have been able to build high speed network hardware, capacity is not usually a problem.

因为工程师已经能够构建高速网络硬件，所以容量通常不是问题。

 So many computer interconnections use packet-switching that, throughout the remainder of this test, the term network will refer only to packet-switched networks.

如此多的计算机互连使用分组交换，以至于在本测试的剩余部分中，“网络”一词仅指分组交换网络。