Congestion and flow control in Signaling System No. 7—impacts of intelligent networks and new services

Abstract
Focuses on the transient performance analysis of the congestion and flow control mechanisms in CCITT Signaling System No. 7 (SS7). Special attention is directed to the impacts of the introduction of intelligent services and new applications, e.g., Freephone, credit card services, user-to-user signaling, etc. In particular, the authors show that signaling traffic characteristics like signaling scenarios or signaling message length as well as end-to-end signaling capabilities have a significant influence on the congestion and flow control and, therefore, on the real-time signaling performance. One important result of the performance studies is that if, e.g., intelligent services are introduced, the SS7 congestion and flow control does not work correctly. To solve this problem, some reinvestigations into these mechanisms would be necessary. Therefore, some approaches, e.g., modification of the signaling connection control part (SCCP) congestion control, usage of the SCCP relay function, or a redesign of the message transfer part (MTP) flow control procedures are discussed in order to guarantee the efficacy of the congestion and flow control mechanisms also in the future.

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