Markovian model for the evaluation of reliability of computer networks with intermittent faults

Abstract

For a system suffering from intermittent and permanent faults, various Markov models describing the intermittent and permanent faults are developed. Keeping the transition rate for the permanent fault constant, it is shown that the reliability and mean-time-to-failure (MTTF) of a module under intermittent and permanent faults decrease steadily with an increase in intermittent fault transition rates. However, if one evaluates the reliability and MTTF of a system for only permanent failures, one can find that they have larger values than those seen when both types of faults are present in the system. >