Connectionless and connection-oriented packet switching

The service actually provided to the user by networks using packet switching nodes can be either connection less (based on datagram messages), or virtual circuit switching (also known as connection oriented). Some connectionless protocols are Ethernet, IP, and UDP connection oriented packet-switching protocols include X.25, Frame relay, Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS), and TCP.

In connection-oriented networks, each packet is labeled with a connection ID rather than an address. Address information is only transferred to each node during a connection set-up phase, when the route to the destination is discovered and an entry is added to the switching table in each network node through which the connection passes. The signalling protocols used allow the application to specify its requirements and the network to specify what capacity etc. is available, and acceptable values for service parameters to be negotiated. Routing a packet is very simple, as it just requires the node to look up the ID in the table. The packet header can be small, as it only needs to contain the ID and any information (such as length, timestamp, or sequence number) which is different for different packets.

In connectionless networks, each packet is labeled with a destination address, source address, and port numbers; it may also be labeled with the sequence number of the packet. This precludes the need for a dedicated path to help the packet find its way to its destination, but means that much more information is needed in the packet header, which is therefore larger, and this information needs to be looked up in power-hungry content-addressable memory. Each packet is dispatched and may go via different routes; potentially, the system has to do as much work for every packet as the connection-oriented system has to do in connection set-up, but with less information as to the application's requirements. At the destination, the original message/data is reassembled in the correct order, based on the packet sequence number. Thus a virtual connection, also known as a virtual circuit or byte stream is provided to the end-user by a transport layer protocol, although intermediate network nodes only provides a connectionless network layer service.