Editing Network traffic simulation (section)

==Overview==

Telecommunications systems are complex real-world systems, containing many different components which interact, in complex interrelationships.<ref name="flood">Flood, J.E. ''Telecommunications Switching, Traffic and Networks'', Chapter 4: Telecommunications Traffic, New York: Prentice-Hall, 1998.</ref> The analysis of such systems can become extremely difficult: modelling techniques tend to analyse each component rather than the relationships between components.<ref name="flood" /><ref name="penttinen">Penttinen A., ''Chapter 9 – Simulation'', Lecture Notes: S-38.145 - Introduction to Teletraffic Theory, Helsinki University of Technology, Fall 1999.</ref> [[Simulation]] is an approach which can be used to model large, complex [[stochastic]] systems for [[telecommunications forecasting|forecasting]] or [[network performance|performance]] [[traffic measurement (telecommunications)|measurement]] purposes.<ref name="flood" /><ref name="penttinen" /><ref name="kennedy">Kennedy I. G., ''Traffic Simulation'', School of Electrical and Information Engineering, University of the Witwatersrand, 2003.</ref> It is the most common quantitative modelling technique used.<ref name="flood" />

The selection of simulation as a modelling tool is usually because it is less restrictive. Other modelling techniques may impose material mathematical restrictions on the process, and also require multiple intrinsic assumptions to be made.<ref name="penttinen" />

Network traffic simulation usually follows the following four steps:<ref name="flood" /><ref name="penttinen" />

*Modelling the system as a dynamic [[stochastic]] (i.e. random) process
*Generation of the realizations of this stochastic process
*Measurement of Simulation data
*Analysis of output data