SEATER - AN OBJECT-ORIENTED SIMULATION ENVIRONMENT USING LEARNING AUTOMATA FOR TELEPHONE TRAFFIC ROUTING

In this paper we present SEATER-an object-oriented environment in whic h any general telephone traffic routing problem can be set up, tested, and simulated using a variety of routing methods. The routing methods available are the fixed rule, random routing, and routing utilizing a complete assortment of different learning automata. The paper first d escribes the general telephone traffic routing problem, and various ex isting fixed rule routing schemes supported by the system are explaine d. This is followed by a brief motivation and description of learning automata routing techniques, and a survey of those schemes which are s upported by the prototype system implemented. The paper then highlight s the considerations that were taken in the design and implementation of the object-oriented prototype, SEATER. These automata schemes suppo rted by SEATER are compared to the existing fixed rule algorithms in t erms of minimizing the blocking probability of the network. The simula tions show that the former solutions are far superior to any fixed rul e solutions. The advantage of the former lies in their adaptability to changes in telephone traffic. The system is written in SMALLTALK V an d runs on a MAC II.