Hypermedia and network reliability

A simple algorithm utilizing the factoring theorem and other elementary network reductions is available to determine network reliability in a number of different forms. This paper describes a computer-based implementation of such an algorithm housed in a hypermedia environment. The environment can provide for both the formulation and the solution of reliability problems. In our treatment the user draws the network interactively on the computer screen and clicks an on-screen button to perform the reliability analysis. This provides an alternative to manual calculations that become tedious or impossible with networks which are neither series-parallel nor extremely small.