Teletraffic Engineering

Teletraffic theory is defined as the application of probability theory to the solution of problemsconcerning planning, performance evaluation, operation, and maintenance of telecommunication systems. More generally, teletraffic theory can be viewed as discipline of planning where the tools (stochastic processes, queueing theory and numerical simulation) are taken from the discilines of operations research.The term teletraffic covers all kinds of data communication traffic and telecommunication traffic. The theory will primarily be illustrated by examples from telephone and data communication system. The tools developed are, however, independent of the technology and applicable within other areas such as road traffic, air traffic, manufacturing and assembly belts, distribution, workshop and storage management, and all kinds of service system.The objective of teletraffic theory can be formulated as follows:to make the traffic measurable in well defined units through mathematical models and to derive the relationship between grade-of-service and system capacity in such a way that the theory becomes a tool by which investments can be planned.The task of teletraffic theory is to design systems as cost effectively as possible with a predivined grade of service when we know the future traffic demand and the capacity of system elements. Furthermore, it is the task of teletraffic engineering to specify methods for controlling that the actual grade of service is fulfilling the requirements, and also to specify emergency actions when systems are overloaded or technical faults occur. This requires methods for forcasting the demand (for instance based on traffic measurements), methods for calculating the capacity of the systems, and specification of quantitative measures for the grade of service.When applying the theory in practice, a series of decision problems concerning both short term as well as long term arrangements occur.http://www.com.dtu.dk/teletraffic