An assessment of circuit switching network functionalities

Circuit switching networks (CSN) are devices providing electrical interconnec- tion paths between a set of input terminals and a set of output terminals, by means of a set of switching elements controlled by a proper logic. First developed for telephone applications, CSN are being used more and more extensively also in computer architecture, but a good understanding of their fe- atures is required in order to take advantage from them. In this paper an assessment of the subject is proposed, with regard to network functionalities, and some related results are discussed. Moreover a set of significant parameters, useful to characterize the properties of various functionalities, is introduced and expressions tovaluate them are given.