Abstract
This paper is concerned with evaluating the performance of loss networks. Accurate determination of loss network performance can assist in the design and dimensioning of telecommunications networks. However, exact determination can be diffcult and generally cannot be done in reasonable time. For these reasons there is much interest in developing fast and accurate approximations. We develop a reduced load approximation that improves on the famous Erlang fixed point approximation (EFPA) in a variety of circumstances. We illustrate our results with reference to a range of networks for which the EFPA may be expected to perform badly.