Network Sovereignty: A Novel Metric and Its Application on Network Design

Most network planning problems in the literature consider metrics, such as cost, availability, and other technology-aware attributes. However, network operators now face new challenges in designing their networks to minimize their dependencies on manufacturers. A low dependency is associated with higher network robustness in case one or more manufacturers fail due to erroneous component design, geopolitical banning of manufacturers, or other reasons discussed in this work. Our work discusses network sovereignty, i.e., the ability to operate a network while minimizing the dependencies on a particular manufacturer to minimize the impact of simultaneous manufacturer failure(s). Network sovereignty is considered by solving the manufacturer assignment problem in the network such that robustness is maximized. The following three main contributions of this work are, first, the discussion of network sovereignty as a special attribute of dependability, second, the introduction of a novel metric—the path set diversity (PSD) score to measure a network's sovereignty based on the manufacturers used in the network, and, third, the introduction of Naga, an integer linear program formulation to maximize network sovereignty using the PSD score. We compare the Naga’s performance with centrality metrics-based heuristics and an availability-based optimization. Our work aims to be the foundation to guide network operators in increasing their network sovereignty.