In telecommunication networks, traffic intensity is a measure of the average occupancy of a server or resource during a specified period of time, normally a busy hour. It is measured in traffic units (erlangs) and defined as the ratio of the time during which a facility is cumulatively occupied to the time this facility is available for occupancy.
In a digital network, the traffic intensity is:
where
- a is the average arrival rate of packets (e.g. packets/sec)
- L is the average packet length (e.g. in bits), and
- R is the transmission rate (e.g. bits/sec)
A traffic intensity greater than one erlang means that the rate at which bits arrive exceeds the rate bits can be transmitted and queuing delay will grow without bound (if the traffic intensity stays the same). If the traffic intensity is less than one erlang, then the router can handle more average traffic.
Telecommunication operators are vitally interested in traffic intensity, as it dictates the amount of equipment they must supply.
Famous quotes containing the words traffic and/or intensity:
“There was a girl who was running the traffic desk, and there was a woman who was on the overnight for radio as a producer, and my desk assistant was a woman. So when the world came to an end, we took over.”
—Marya McLaughlin, U.S. television newswoman. As quoted in Women in Television News, ch. 3, by Judith S. Gelfman (1976)
“The bourgeois treasures nothing more highly than the self.... And so at the cost of intensity he achieves his own preservation and security. His harvest is a quiet mind which he prefers to being possessed by God, as he prefers comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to that deathly inner consuming fire.”
—Hermann Hesse (1877–1962)