Overall reliability evaluation for large computer communication networks: An MHC approach

An important parameter in the topological design of computer communication networks is that of overall reliability, rather than terminal-pair reliability, as one is interested in not allowing service disruption between any pair of nodes. Exact techniques for overall reliability evaluation based on the spanning trees idea fail for networks even of reasonable size because of the enormous amount of computer time and storage required. In this paper, we present a very simple and fast method based on an m-level hierarchical clustering (MHC) for network overall reliability evaluation which gives results as good as exact techniques for realistic values of link reliability (e.g. 0.9 or more). Adaptability of a practical clustering method (i.e. complete linkage, CL) to obtain near optimal clusters for overall reliability evaluation by incorporating suggested modifications is proposed.