## Network management

#### A major factor in any communications network is the management of the network, which covers not only the intelligent routing of traffic around the network, making the most efficient use of the resource, but also taking care of generating billing information for charging users, and gathering statistical information for monitoring the network performance and loading. Today, the major task of network management is automated and realized through millions of lines of computer code running on powerful computers within the main switching centres. The network management task of efficient routing within a mobile network is particularly challenging, with the network having to know and track the location of several hundreds of millions of mobile users who can be anywhere in the world and then select the most cost-effective, or least utilized, or minimum time delay route between the calling parties! |

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