A major factor in any communications network is the management of the
network, which covers not only the intelligent routing of traffic around the network,
making the most efficient use of the resource, but also taking care of generating billing
information for charging users, and gathering statistical information for monitoring the
network performance and loading.
Today, the major task of network management is automated and realized through millions of
lines of computer code running on powerful computers within the main switching centres.
The network management task of efficient routing within a mobile network is particularly
challenging, with the network having to know and track the location of several hundreds of
millions of mobile users who can be anywhere in the world and then select the most
cost-effective, or least utilized, or minimum time delay route between the calling
parties!
|
 |