Near-optimal routing for voice and data traffic in integrated broadband networks

Reduced-load approximation techniques are developed for evaluating accurately and efficiently end-to-end performance measures for integrated voice/data broadband networks with arbitrary connectivities and link capacities. Circuit-switching is used for the voice traffic while packet-switching is used for the data traffic which takes advantage of the silent periods of voice calls. The knapsack and Pascal methods are applied on the probabilities of blocking of voice calls and of queueing of data packets as well as on the average queueing delays of data on the network links. The sensitivities of these performance measures to changes in traffic loads and link capacities are also so evaluated. The accuracy and computational efficiency of the approximations are shown to be very satisfactory for a broad range of network and traffic parameters; thus, they can be used to derive near-optimal (a) alternative routing rules for voice calls and (b) load-sharing routing rules for data messages, while keeping the computer run times short.