The authors describe the structure of the worldwide intelligent network (WIN), describe methods for its design and planning, investigate the adequacy of decentralized control for problem-free worldwide call completion, explore the feasibility of adaptive routing and control concepts, discuss network robustness/reliability objectives, and describe a strategy for achieving these objectives for all cooperating international carriers. Several decentralized adaptive routing policies that are particularly attractive in the WIN environment and network performance improvements that can be achieved with the introduction of flexible routing capabilities are characterized. It is shown by example that network integration coupled with flexible routing and bandwidth allocation for preferential treatment of new services provides an effective approach for robust and economical new service provisioning.>