Optimum Network Call-Carrying Capacity

Telephone communication facilities are designed to adequately handle peak traffic loads of an average day. In many instances the system is subject to higher loads. Classic examples of situations in which overloads occur are during holidays such as Christmas or Mother's Day, after disasters such as earthquakes or hurricanes, and during facility failures. Because of the time lag necessary to install new equipment, high overloads can also occur in normal operation in cases in which predicted traffic growth is greatly exceeded by actual traffic growth. An interesting observed phenomenon is that under certain high-load situations fewer calls may be completed than during normal load periods. Recognition of this gave rise to the subject of network management. One objective of network management is to control the handling of calls so that the maximum number of calls is put through the network. An interesting discussion of the network management problem and early work to understand the phenomena involved in it is contained in Ref. 1. In response to the problems mentioned in Ref. 1, a simulation 1195