Reliability Analysis of Ethernet Ring Mesh Networks

Design optimization for reliable networking is necessary for Ethernet ring mesh networks with ITU-T G.8032 Ethernet ring protection recommendation or with the IEC 62439-3 high-availability seamless redundancy protocol. To achieve this goal, the precise analysis of reliability/availability in Ethernet ring mesh consisting of single or multiple rings is one of the basic needs. Calculation of network reliability in these networks is an NP-hard problem. Therefore, most of the reliability and availability analyses were based on approximation and inaccurate methods. In this paper, at first, using decomposition method, a careful reliability analysis of Ethernet single-ring mesh networks will be presented. In addition, an accurate analysis of the reliability of Ethernet multiple-ring mesh networks will be performed by a novel approach named the spanning tree set method. Then, the availability of the ring networks with imperfect coverage and online repair assumptions will be analyzed using a hierarchical model in which each subsystem is modeled as a series system of independent Markov components.