Abstract— We consider the computational complexity and algorithm challenges in designing survivable access networks. With limited routing capability, the structure of an access network is typically a “fat” tree, where the terminal has to relay the traffic from another terminal of the same or higher level. New graph theory problems naturally arise from such features of access network models, different from those targeted towards survivable backbone (mesh) networks. We model the important problem of provisioning survivability to an existing single-level fat tree through two graph theory problem formulations: the Terminal Backup problem and the Simplex Cover problem, which we show to be equivalent. We then develop two polynomial-time approaches, indirect and direct, for the Simplex Cover problem. The indirect approach of solving the matching version of Simplex Cover is convenient in proving polynomial-time solvability though it is prohibitively slow in practice. In contrast, levera...