 This sacrifices total bandwidth available if the dedicated connections are poorly utilized, but makes the connection and bandwidth more predictable, and only introduces control overhead when the connections are initiated, rather than with every packet handled, as in modern packet-switched networks.When the Clos network was first devised, the number of crosspoints was a good approximation of the total cost of the switching system.While this was important for electromechanical crossbars, it became less relevant with the advent of VLSI, wherein the interconnects could be implemented either directly in silicon, or within a relatively small cluster of boards.