TABLE OF CONTENTS A book on applied probability would be pointless without applications. There are a huge number of possibilities including applications to the biological sciences, to manufacturing or to the behavioural sciences but here we emphasize applications to telecommunications and to quality control.
Real world applications of applied probability are as near at hand as your telephone. The information revolution is upon us. The integration of computing and telecommunications will change the way people live and work. Traditional services such as mail, bank transactions and newspaper subscriptions will be delivered electronically directly to the home along with telephone services. New services will emerge that we can't imagine. These services will be delivered on the information highway built on a network of fiber optical cables.
The traffic laws for this highway are hotly debated. Asynchronous transfer mode or ATM was conceived in the late nineteen eighties as international standard for the integrated services digital networks or ISDN networks capable of carrying the above mixture of services. This standard was designed to deliver the quality of service we expect from a telephone network. However, the advent of the world wide web changed everything! The light and easy internet protocol TCP/IP (Transfer Control Protocol over the Internet Protocol) was better adapted for delivering web pages. Today the TCP/IP protocol dominates but so far falls short in delivering the quality of service envisaged for ATM.
Both protocols are based on sending information in packets across the network.
