Assignment title: Information
Telecommunication Networks M Assignment, SP2 2016
Network dimensioning for a 2-campus university
This assignment will test your ability to apply the simple elements of knowledge gained
throughout the course to a “real-life” problem. You will need to be able to make realistic
assumptions, justify them, and then translate them into the design of your system.
Please note that in practice each set of assumptions made by individual students will be
unique. There is no one correct set of assumptions, one correct method to solve each
problem, or one correct answer to the task you will be asked to carry out. However, to
score well, you need to be able to provide convincing arguments to justify your choices
of assumptions and methods used to produce a design that is consistent with these
assumptions.
Note that for the telephone lines dimensioning tasks you will have to locate an Erleng B
calculator that does not have the limitations on the traffic intensity and number of circuits
– there are many calculators like this available for free on the www.
Please remember that this is an individual assignment work that has to be carried out
by individual students without external help.
Also, please remember that this is NOT a huge task that requires hundreds of hours of
effort and tens of pages of reporting. You can finish the assignment within no more than
10-15 hours, and prepare a complete report no longer than 6-10 pages.
1. The general scenario
Consider a university with 2 campuses A and B. Campus A is the campus where all
central IT facilities (PABX, VoIP server, Intranet server) are located. Campuses are
connected with each other and with the outside world as shown in the figure below.The central servers include, depending on the scenario, PABX, Intranet www and file
servers, mail server etc.
The I/F denotes interface equipment to the connecting link or circuit group. Depending
on the scenario, it might be a PDH multiplex interface, IP router, etc.
Common assumptions:
1. There are 2000 staff and 4000 students in Campus A, and 1000 staff and 4000
students in Campus B.
2. Assume that all telephone and data traffic generated by the staff and students can
be considered Poisson. This is a crude assumption (please check the slides on
Internet traffic), but necessary for simplicity.
3. Only the staff members generate phone calls. Assume that all staff generate
exactly the same telephone traffic. The traffic is distributed uniformly among staff
members, i.e. staff member X sends/receives the same amount of telephone traffic
to/from staff member Y as they do to/from another staff member Z.
4. Every staff member has a telephone on the desk and a computer (hence they
generate both telephone and data traffic). Assume that all staff members generate
the same amount of data traffic.
5. Students generate only data traffic. Assume that all students generate the same
data traffic.
2. Your tasks
Task 1:
Make realistic assumptions as to the traffic generation behaviour of an individual staff
member and individual student. In other words, assign numbers to the following:
a) Average arrival rate of telephone calls to/from each staff member’s telephone λi
(assume that this includes both outgoing and incoming calls and that λi will have
the same value for all staff ).
b) Average call holding time (assume the same value for all calls).
c) Proportion of internal telephone traffic i.e. proportion of telephone traffic
exchanged with other staff (this will be uniformly distributed across all staff).
d) The average downlink data traffic (file and email downloads, web pages) per
staff member in bps (or kbps or Mbps – whatever suits the purpose).
e) The average downlink data traffic per student.
f) Proportion of downlink data traffic originating at organisation’s internal servers
(note: the remaining downlink data traffic will originate at external sources).
Assume that this proportion is the same for staff as it is for students.
g) The average uplink data traffic (web, email etc. requests, TCP ACKs, uploads of
emails) per staff member in bps (or kbps or Mbps).
h) The average uplink data traffic (web, email etc. requests, TCP ACKs, uploads of
emails) per student in bps (or kbps or Mbps).
i) Proportion of uplink data traffic terminating at internal servers (the remaining part
will go to the outside world). Assume that this proportion is the same for staff and
students.
Provide rationale for each assumption (i.e. explain why you consider it realistic).Task 2:
For this task, only consider telephone traffic generated by staff members. Assume that all
telephone traffic is circuit-switched as in the traditional PSTN. The relevant scenario is
illustrated in the figure below. The “central servers” become a PABX, the “interface
equipment” at Campus B becomes a telephone line concentrator with PDH multiplex
equipment, and the interface at Campus A becomes PDH multiplex equipment, as in the
figure.
a) Given the assumptions made in Task 1 a,b,c, map the total telephone traffic flows
(in Erlangs) onto circuit group A-B and the external circuit group. Show the
reasoning leading to the answer you gave.
b) If we require that the end-to-end GoS probability of loss for each call (internal
and external) is no greater than 0.01 (1 in 100), what are the GoS probabilities of
loss allowed for each of the two groups of circuits?
c) Given the results in a and b above, what are the required numbers of circuits in
each group?
Task 3:
For this task, only consider data traffic as specified in Task 1 d,e,f,g,h,i. As illustrated in
the figure below, the “central servers” now become the email/www servers, and the
“interface equipment” is simply IP routers.a) Map the total flows of data (in kbps or Mbps) generated by staff and students onto
the links connecting Campus B with A and Campus A with outside world. Please
assume that both links are part of WAN (leased from external providers), not part
of the organisation’s Ethernet. As a consequence, for each link you have to state
separately the downlink and uplink traffic. Provide rationale (explanation) for
your answer.
b) Given the traffic flows obtained in a above, state the data rate capacity (in Mbps)
required for each link (separately in the downlink and uplink directions), under
the condition that average packet delay for each link cannot exceed 2 ms.
Assume that the internal data transfers between servers, hosts and routers located
in the same Campus incur negligible delay, and that the processing delay at
servers and routers is also negligible. Note: you may need to make a realistic
assumption regarding the average packet length (why?)
c) Calculate the buffer sizes required on the link AB and the link BA to ensure
that the packet loss in no more than 1 in 2000.
Task 4:
For this task, assume that all telephony needs of the organisation are served with the
VoIP solution. Assume that the VoIP codec rate is 64 kbps. Assume that the modem
transmits data only when there is a talkspurt, and that it does not transmit anything during
the silence period. Assume the average talkspurt duration of 0.6 s and the average silence
duration of 0.4 s, and that in a typical phone call 50% of talkspurts are transmitted in one
direction, and 50% in the other (i.e. that either one or the other party in the call can talk
and that they talk, on average, for the same amount of time). This results in the symmetry
of downlink and uplink traffic loads incurred by the VoIP call.
a) Calculate the additional VoIP data traffic (in kbps or Mbps) loading each of the
two links (external, A-B) in each (uplink and downlink) direction. Note: to find
out the average data traffic generated by a VoIP call in each direction, you may
reuse the calculation of data source as given in the tutorial materials, but in the
case at hand there are much simpler ways to get the same result. Please try tokeep it simple! I will not give additional points for data source calculation – in
fact, I may take them away
b) Given that all traffic in the organisation is now data traffic, calculate the total data
traffic for each link in each direction (i.e. add the VoIP traffic to the data traffic
resulting from Task 3a).
c) Will the addition of VoIP traffic to the remaining data traffic make significant
difference to the dimensioning of the data links? Justify your answer.
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