Modeling and performance analysis have played an important role in the economical design and efficient operation of switching systems, and is currently becoming more important because the switching systems should handle a wide range of traffic characteristics, meeting the grade of service requirements of each traffic type. Without these techniques we could no longer achieve economy and efficiency of the switching systems in complex traffic characteristic environments. From the beginning of research on electronic switching systems offering circuit-switched applications, Stored Program Control (SPC) technology has posed challenges in the area of modeling and performance analysis as well as queueing structure, efficient scheduling, and overload control strategy design. Not only teletraffic engineers and performance analysts, but also queueing theorists have been attracted to this new field, and intensive research activities, both in theory and in practice, have continued over the past two decades, now evolving to even a broader technical field including traditional performance analysis. This article reviews a number of important issues that have been raised and solved, and whose solutions have been reflected in the design of SPC switching systems. It first discusses traffic problems for centralized control systems. It next discusses traffic problems inherent in distributed switching systems.