STM and Packet Switching
Issues with Synchronous Transfer Mode:
- unused time slots wasted because receiver knows owner of data only by timing
- because of fixed cyclical schedules in TDM, can only get bandwidth in multiples of the available schedule (e.g. n * 64kb/s)
Packet Switching:
- by placing headers on packets, can provide statistical multiplexing (better utilization) at the added cost of additional buffering