Survivability evaluation for networks carrying complex traffic flows

Abstract

The capability of a system to fulfill its mission promptly in the presence of attacks, failures, or accidents is one of the qualitative definitions of survivability. In this paper, we propose a model for survivability quantification, which is acceptable for networks carrying complex traffic flows. Complex network traffic is considered as general multi-rate, heterogeneous traffic, where the individual bandwidth demands may aggregate in complex, nonlinear ways. Blocking probability is the chosen measure for survivability analysis. We study an arbitrary topology and some other known topologies for the network. Independent and dependent failure scenarios as well as deterministic and random traffic models are investigated. Finally, we provide survivability evaluation results for different network configurations. The results show that by using about 50% of the link capacity in networks with a relatively high number of links, the blocking probability remains near zero in the case of a limited number of failures.

Keywords

• Blocking probability
• Complex traffic
• Link failure
• Network survivability
• Disaster recovery
• Information assurance