EVALUATION AND OPTIMIZATION OF RELIABILITY OF COMPUTER NETWORKS

Abstract

In the analysis and design of any computer commu-nication system, one of the fundamental consideration is the possibility of successful communication path between various pair of nodes in the network. This obviously depends both on the topological layout of the communication links and the reliability of the constituent centres and the conn-ecting links. Based on the definition of acceptable network operation, two most meaningful measures of reliability of a communication network are the iterminal reliability' between a given pair of communication centres and the 'overall relia- b ility; In this dissertation, out of these two measures, only one measure i.e. terminal reliability has been considered. An algorithim has been developed,, which computes the terminal reliability from a set of paths or cutsets, and improves the efficiency of a process by eliminating the generation of un-» successful states. The suggested method has been explained with suitable examples and successfully implemented on DECSYSTEM-2050, using PASCAL as the programming language. Keeping in view of the extensive use of large scale computer communication networks, another algorithim is considered which, having the knowledge of the locations of ii. various computer centres (nodes) and the possible position of links (edges) which can be connected between various node pairs, suggests an optimal network topology, which gives us the maximum ter- mina]. reliability, when the maximum permissible cast of establishing the links is specified. This algorithim has also been implemented, using the previous algorithim.