TY - GEN A1 - Eisenblätter, Andreas A1 - Koster, Arie M.C.A. A1 - Wallbaum, Randolf A1 - Wessäly, Roland T1 - Load Balancing in Signaling Transfer Points N2 - Signaling is crucial to the operation of modern telecommunication networks. A breakdown in the signaling infrastructure typically causes customer service failures, incurs revenue losses, and hampers the company image. Therefore, the signaling network has to be highest reliability and survivability. This in particular holds for the routers in such a network, called \textit{signaling transfer points\/} (STPs). The robustness of an STP can be improved by equally distributing the load over the internal processing units. Several constraints have to be taken into account. The load of the links connected to a processing unit changes over time introducing an imbalance of the load. In this paper, we show how integer linear programming can be applied to reduce the imbalance within an STP, while keeping the number of changes small. Two alternative models are presented. Computational experiments validate the integer programming approach in practice. The GSM network operator E-Plus saves substantial amounts of time and money by employing the proposed approach. T3 - ZIB-Report - 02-50 KW - Signaling network KW - STP KW - load-balancing KW - integer programming KW - computations Y1 - 2002 UR - https://opus4.kobv.de/opus4-zib/frontdoor/index/index/docId/717 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-7179 ER -