Reliable backup routing in fault tolerant real-time networks

Abstract

Broadband integrated services digital networks (B-ISDN) are aimed to transport both real-time traffic and non real-time traffic. Many of these applications require quality of service (QoS) guarantees. In the literature, not much work is found to provide QoS guarantees based on fault tolerance. Reliability of network links is considered as one of the parameters when providing QoS guarantees to applications. Considering reliability of network links as a parameter for QoS guarantees gives the applications more flexibility in choosing the network resources. A new terminology for dispersity routing is presented which will be useful in providing QoS guarantees based on reliability. Dispersity routing transmits the traffic along multiple paths. Also, a reliable backup resource allocation method is presented that can be used in the context of dispersity routing for fault tolerant real-time networks. An assumption is made that higher capacity is assigned to the links which are more reliable. This will help in availability of resources for a longer period of time. Also, reliability of links is considered to compute multiple paths along with shortest path metric.