The Fundamental Role of Teletraffic in the Evolution of Telecommunications Networks

Book excerpt: The International Teletraffic Congress (ITC) is a recognized international organization taking part in the work of the International Telecommunications Union. The congress traditionally deals with the development of teletraffic theory and its applications to the design, planning and operation of telecommunication systems, networks and services. The contents of ITC 14 illustrate the important role of teletraffic in the current period of rapid evolution of telecommunication networks. A large number of papers address the teletraffic issues behind developments in broadband communications and ATM technology. The extension of possiblities for user mobility and personal communications together with the generalization of common channnel signalling and the provision of new intelligent network services are further extremely significant developments whose teletraffic implications are explored in a number of contributions. ITC 14 also addresses traditional teletraffic subjects, proposing enhancements to traffic engineering practices for existing circuit and packet switched telecommunications networks and making valuable original contributions to the fundamental mathematical tools on which teletraffic theory is based. The contents of these Proceedings accurately reflect the extremely wide scope of the ITC, extending from basic mathematical theory to day-to-day traffic engineering practices, and constitute the state of the art in 1994 of one of the fundamental telecommunications sciences.