Cisco CCNA certification exam training means you need to learn a lot of new terms, and some of them can be a little problematic at first view.
To pass this hard certification exam,you definitely need to understand one term which is packet switching. The first question, of course, is "What is packet switching in the first place?" In today's Cisco CCNA exam prep tutorial we will learn about this term.

Packets transmitted from "point A" to "point B" all have to arrive at the same destination, but with packet switching, they do not all have to take the same path to get there. If you and I are standing 10 feet apart and I want to throw a rugby ball to you, I've got some options. I could bounce the ball off the floor to you, I could throw it directly to you, or I could send it up into the air to you. Packet switching is pretty the same thing - packets will take different paths to get from source to destination, but the result is that all the packets arrive at the destination. Then they are then reassembled to take the form of the original message.

Packet switching may sound a little odd, but this is the most efficient way of transporting the data. Frame Relay is a packet switching technology, as is X.25, and both of these standards are very efficient.

When we have packets that must arrive at the destination in the same order in which they left the source, packet switching is not the best choice. For this situation, we'll need to use something like circuit switching, and we'll discuss that in tomorrow's Cisco CCNA certification training article!

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