Arachne: Planning the Interoffice Facilities Network at NYNEX

Arachne is a decision-support system developed by NYNEX to automate its interoffice facilities planning. Planning is a highly complex process, and the decisions made result in the expenditure of hundreds of millions of dollars each year. By integrating heuristic rules and optimization techniques in an innovative manner, Arachne has fundamentally changed the nature of network planning at NYNEX. Arachne improves the reliability and quality of the network plans, reduces the time it takes to complete the planning task, and has led to savings of at least $33 million dollars to date. In addition to supporting the planning task, Arachne also provides a means of exploring new network technologies and planning strategies.