Modeling and simulation of the common channel signalling (CCS7) network

This paper discusses a simulation study of CCS7 network. The approach consists of modeling the CCS7 network in terms of its physical resources, such as signalling links, and protocols. Services were categorized into call-types and characterized in terms of the signalling messages required for each call-type. The call-types modeled thus far are: POTS (local and Toll calls), 800, and simple Advanced Intelligent Network (AIN) services. A discrete event simulation program called Comnet III from CACI was used as the simulation environment. The results of the simulation study comparing this model to measurements obtained from an actual network are presented. From the results it is shown that simulation models are useful planning tools.