Catastrophic Failures in a Backbone Network

When developing a backbone network protection scheme, one important consideration is the number of concurrent link failures against which protection should be provided. A carrier typically is concerned with links going down due to independent failure events such as fiber cuts or amplifier failures. When considering just these factors, a carrier has little incentive to offer protection against more than two concurrent link failures. However, when catastrophic events are also considered, it is shown that it is worthwhile to protect mission-critical connections against up to three concurrent link failures. It is also shown that a newly developed connection setup protocol can be effective in rapidly recovering from multiple link failures.