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Rather than have messages travel single hop at a time, sometimes circuit is first established from sender to receiver, and then data transmitted along circuit.
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Similar to establishing phone connection
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Can result in significantly lower communication overhead as latency deterministic once circuit established
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If circuit blocked, many options possible, including
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Retry, perhaps with alternative circuit or random delay
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Wormhole routing: message travel like a wagon-train along path, stops when blocked but stays in circuit.
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Virtual cut-through: message dumps into memory where forward progress blocked, then retries. Blend of pure circuit-switching and store-and-forward.
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At high levels of message traffic, performance sometimes severely degraded.
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