During the past 50 years telecommunication network technology has raced ahead powered by exponential advances in computer chip and fiber optic technology. The introduction of packet‐switched networks and the Internet has increased network traffic demands exponentially and has nurtured a variety of new telecommunication services (e.g., email, web‐surfing, social media, streaming services, e‐commerce, the Internet of Things, etc.) over the past 30 years. This rapidly changing environment (along with certain technical considerations) has made it very difficult to give accurate forecasts of traffic demands for both the short‐term (intraday) and for the longer term (year‐to‐year). Telecommunications network design has evolved from the voice‐only networks of the 1970s where operations research (OR) methodology was indispensable to current multiservice packet‐switched data networks whose uncertainty and rapid evolution has reduced the utility of classical optimization models that rely on accurate traffic demand forecasts. After summarizing the major developments in telecommunications network design technologies/services, we describe some promising future research directions to address an environment where technology is ever‐changing and traffic forecasting is difficult. In particular, we focus on the public Internet and emphasize possible work where OR/optimization methodology may be useful in understanding and solving telecommunications network routing and design problems.

中文翻译：

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电信网络设计：技术影响和未来方向

在过去的50年中，由于计算机芯片和光纤技术的迅猛发展，电信网络技术飞速发展。分组交换网络和Internet的引入成倍地增加了网络流量需求，并培育了各种新的电信服务（例如，电子邮件，网络冲浪，社交媒体，流服务，电子商务，物联网等） 。）在过去的30年中。这种快速变化的环境（以及某些技术考虑因素）使得很难准确预测短期（日内）和长期（每年）。电信网络设计已从1970年代纯语音网络发展而来，在该网络中，运筹学（OR）方法学是必不可少的，而当前的多业务分组交换数据网络的不确定性和快速发展减少了依靠精确流量需求的经典优化模型的实用性预测。在总结了电信网络设计技术/服务的主要发展之后，我们描述了一些有前途的未来研究方向，以解决技术日新月异，流量预测困难的环境。尤其是，我们专注于公共Internet，并强调可能的工作，其中OR /优化方法可能有助于理解和解决电信网络的路由和设计问题。