A new reliability measure for computer networks

Abstract

A new reliability measure for computer communication networks, mean 2-terminal throughput per unit capacity, is proposed as an alternative to conventional reliability measures. It gives an idea of the amount of traffic that can be reliably transferred from the source to the destination in a network with unreliable components, per unit installed capacity. The measure is then extended to an index of overall network reliability. A computationally efficient scheme to evaluate the proposed measure is presented and numerical examples are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of this measure over conventional measures. Finally, another method of evaluating the measure, as a function of the routing scheme, is presented.