X.25 Permanent Virtual Circuits (PVC)

PVCs may at first glance appear to be simpler to handle than SVCs, as there is no call set-up and clearing with which to deal.

However, working out the state of remote DTE is not so simple - for example, it be may be powered off, or there may not be an application attached to the PVC. This therefore leads to a number of complications, so it is the opinion of the author that SVCs should be used instead of PVCs whenever there is a choice.

Having said that, PVCs are suitable:

  • when a higher-layer protocol is used on top of the PVC to determine explicitly whether the remote application is responding;
  • for the same sort of applications as used with UDP.

For example, market-feed applications are common on PVCs - indeed, some networks support a PVC broadcast facility, such that data packets transmitted on a PVC are then sent out by the network to a number of different remote DTEs.

The Call set-up and Clearing packets are not used on PVCs - the PVC starts in the data transfer state. Because the PVC will probably have been used previously, when attaching to a PVC an application should cause the PVC to be Reset.

Using the FarSync X.25 Sockets API with PVCs

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14-Sep-2016