A General Framework for Service Availability for Bandwidth-Efficient Connection-Oriented Networks

Availability in connection-oriented service in networks has traditionally been “all-or-nothing,” i.e., when a failure occurs, a connection either is unprotected or fully protected. The differences in availability and cost between these two extremes can be quite high. A general framework for service availability will be presented that fills the gap. It is shown how network resources and cost are related to service parameters of the framework for networks that are bandwidth-efficient. In addition, a simple revenue model is presented and characterized, revealing when nontraditional service agreements may be attractive.