On definitions of congestion in communication networks

Beginning with the familiar ideas of time-congestion and call-congestion for a full access trunk-group, this paper considers the relations between various measures of congestion for networks of more general structure. The discussion is based on a simple heuristic model which makes the definitions of time- and call-congestion directly comparable. This model leads to a two-dimensional classification of measures of congestion, which should be useful in treating types of systems not mentioned here. Three importan papers in the literature are analyzed in terms of the proposed classification