Telecommunications Network

telecommunications network, electronic system of links and switches, and the controls that govern their operation, that allows for data transfer and exchange among multiple users.

When several users of telecommunications media wish to communicate with one another, they must be organized into some form of network. In theory, each user can be given a direct point-to-point link to all the other users in what is known as a fully connected topology (similar to the connections employed in the earliest days of telephony), but in practice this technique is impractical and expensive—especially for a large and dispersed network. Furthermore, the method is inefficient, since most of the links will be idle at any given time. Modern telecommunications networks avoid these issues by establishing a linked network of switches, or nodes, such that each user is connected to one of the nodes. Each link in such a network is called a communications channel. Wire, fibre-optic cable, and radio waves may be used for different communications channels.