Performance of Dynamic Networks: A Measurement Consists of Flow, Timing and Reliability

Abstract

Dynamic network models are widely employed for system analysis and performance evaluation of computer and communication systems. In dynamic networks each arc is weighted with a capacity and a transit time. The former is the maximum amount of flow that can travel through the arc per unit time, the later is the time period needed for flow to travel through the arc. In this article, an additional weight operation probability, is assigned to each arc to note the capability of the arc's successful transition. The performance of dynamic networks is defined by the probability that the maximum dynamic flow from source to sink within required time horizon is no less than specified threshold. To the best of our knowledge, no existing article had considered dynamic flow and network reliability simultaneously. Based on facts that there is always a maximum dynamic flow among the temporally repeated flows and the maximum temporally repeated flow can be obtained via an equivalent minimum cost maximum flow problem, we present a pioneering algorithm to compute performance of dynamic networks by solving minimum cost maximum flow and two-terminal capacity reliability at the same time.