Analysis of Queuing Delay in Multimedia Gateway Call Routing

The recent emergence of multimedia applications has led to the deployment of various telecommunication technologies (e.g. IP, wireless) in addition to traditional PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) circuit switched networks. In this heterogeneous telecommunication world, users make calls without regard to the fact that the originating network may differ from the terminating network, and the call may be routed through one or more intermediate networks. For instance, users from two different PSTN networks may communicate through an IP network using Voice over IP (VoIP) technology. In this framework, multimedia gateways perform call routing, call signaling conversions and media format conversions among different networks. This paper investigates algorithms and queuing delays on multimedia gateways in regard to call routing aimed at minimizing the expected call delay. Both centralized and distributed queuing models are considered, and performance measures are derived.