End-to-end service reliability considerations for converged telecommunications networks

Reliability metrics and modeling techniques have been successfully used to analyze the reliability of a system, which typically consists of hardware platforms and software running on top of the hardware platforms. In telecommunications applications, system level reliability evaluation and improvement activities are better-understood. However, measurements for assessing reliability of complex networks still need to be better defined and understood. This becomes particularly essential as evolving telecommunications networks are getting more complicated with diversified technologies, multimedia services and evolving infrastructure. Besides the traditional voice application, today's telecommunication networks support multimedia applications that blend text, voice and video services. These solutions deal with different access technologies (e.g., wireless and wireline) and often use network elements from different vendors. Moreover, different applications (e.g., games, gambling, bank transactions, etc.) can have very different reliability requirements and characteristics. This paper discusses reliability considerations in estimating and analyzing the end-to-end reliability of complicated telecommunications network solutions.