Performance evaluation of adaptive traffic routing in a metropolitan network: a case study

A performance analysis of adaptive traffic in the telephone network of Marseilles, France is presented. The authors give the main reasons for introducing flexible routing-especially, state-dependent routing-in modern telephone networks. They present the Marseilles network under study and briefly describe the routing algorithm and the network design method used. They consider a number of scenarios ranging from traffic overloads to network failures in order to evaluate the robustness and performance of the adaptively routed network. Simulations that emphasize the role of state-dependent routing in network efficiency are presented and analyzed. In some specific cases, the state-dependent routing is complemented with predictive control actions to limit low priority or overflow traffic. This results in an improved grade of service. It is concluded that adaptive traffic routing can cope with a large range of network conditions, such as traffic overloads and equipment failures