Determining a warm-up period for a telephone network routing simulation

We present a new approach to determining the warm-up period for steady-state simulation of telephone traffic. The underlying simulation model captures the sophisticated interactions that determine the acceptance and routing of calls between origin and destination nodes across the telephone network. Recognizing that both the arrival and duration of calls are Markovian, approximate satisfaction of the equivalence property of Jackson networks signifies a stochastic steady state. We are able to determine the onset of steady-state behavior, therefore, by monitoring arrival and departure rates observed during the simulation and testing for equivalence. Application of the rule is illustrated using a simple three-node network