| Summary: | The primary objective of this project was to identify opportunities and develop solutions that will enable
TELUS to reduce the cost of maintaining and improving a portion of their existing local network in
British Columbia, Canada. To realize this objective, the focus was on optimal routing of calls assuming a
fixed network capacity. Our hypothesis was that by changing the routing rules between an origin switch
and a destination switch, we could alleviate pressure from congested areas in the network by diverting
traffic through less utilized areas.
Three types of optimization models have been developed: two linear programs, a mixed-integer model,
and a nonlinear program. Irrespective of their objective functions, the purpose of each model was to
suggest new sets of routes for each pair of switches. Development of these models and assessment of
their ability to suggest routes which reduced the number of blocked calls in the simulated network was the
central focus of this thesis.
The modeling results were compared with the existing routing.rules in a network simulator. It appears
that TELUS could benefit from implementation of alternate nonhierarchical routing rules. Specifically,
employing the combined routing rules - that attempt the direct route first, then attempt the 2-link
Maximum Linear Model routes from the 11:00-12:00 time interval, and finally the currently used
alternate routes - generated the best routing table of those tested. Furthermore, these routing rules can be
employed throughout the day without the need for change. The results from the trunk reservation analysis
suggest that implementation of a uniform policy would be of marginal value. === Business, Sauder School of === Graduate
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