Busy trunks--subscriber behavior [telecom]

These days it is very rare to run out of trunks or switching capacity. However, during emergency situations, such as after heavy storms or other natural disasters, or other major emergencies, there may be a temporary overload on telephone facilities.

If this happens the switches may get overloaded. If a caller hits a busy signal (of any type), they'll try again very quickly. These unsuccessful call attempts represent a load on a switch.

Years ago a flood of call requests to an ESS might cause the entire switch to fail; I'm not sure if today's switches have the same limitation.

Some time ago the Bell System Technical Journal did a study on subscriber behavior out of concern that common control offices would be flooded in special situations. While somewhat dated, it is interesting.

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Posted 5 years ago by Lisa or Jeff in General Telecommunications Forum

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