Resilience provisioning in provider-based overlay networks

Guaranteed levels of network resilience are essential for many emerging and future Internet services. Currently, the only network model that can support stringent resilience requirements is a provider-based overlay network. In such an environment, resilience can be implemented either in the overlay networks or in the physical network. In this paper we look at how the network provider revenue is affected by where resilience is implemented. The idea is to measure the revenue in the two implementation scenarios and compare the generated revenues to find out if the network provider has something to gain by implementing resilience in the physical network and if so under what circumstances. The results of our linear programming based experiments show that network providers can potentially double its revenue when resilience is implemented in the physical network. The customers benefit as well since the overlay networks are significantly less complex and can be built at the same or lower cost than when resilience is implemented in the overlay networks.