Network Reliability With Geographically Correlated Failures

Abstract--Fiber-optic networks are vulnerable to natural disasters, such as tornadoes or earthquakes, as well as to physical failures, such as an anchor cutting underwater fiber cables. Such real-world events occur in specific geographical locations and disrupt specific parts of the network. Therefore, the geography of the network determines the effect of physical events on the network's connectivity and capacity. In this paper, we develop tools to analyze network failures after a `random' geographic disaster. The random location of the disaster allows us to model situations where the physical failures are not targeted attacks. In particular, we consider disasters that take the form of a `random' line in a plane. Using results from geometric probability, we are able to calculate some network performance metrics to such a disaster in polynomial time. In particular, we can evaluate average two-terminal reliability in polynomial time under `random' line-cuts. This is i...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: INFOCOM
• Authors: Sebastian Neumayer, Eytan Modiano
• Keywords: Communications, Disasters, INFOCOM 2010, Polynomial Time, Random