Performance Analysis of Switch Access Systems

The public Internet and corporate intranets have been growing at a phenomenal rate in recent years. Today, the public switched telephone network (PSTN) is the most common mechanism for accessing the Internet and intranets from home. Thus, much of the data traffic is transported through traditional switch access systems. Until recently, traffic engineering for these switch access systems has been based on traffic models consisting predominantly of voice traffic. The current explosion in the amount of data traffic - with differing traffic characteristics - being transported by traditional switching systems may have an adverse impact on the grades of service (GoS) unless engineering rules are modified to account for the new traffic characteristics. While this issue is important for central office switches and inter-switch trunking, it is even more important for relatively smaller access concentrators. This paper compares simulation and analytical models that help in engineering such systems for a mix of traffic.