Application reliability for communication networks and its analysis method

The network reliability is difficult to be evaluated because of the complex relationship among the network components. It can be quite different for different users running different applications on the same network. This paper proposes a new concept and a model of application reliability. Different from the existing models that ignores the effects of applications, the proposed application reliability model considers the effects of different applications on the network performance and different types of network faults and makes the analysis of network components relationship possible. This paper also provides a method to evaluate the application reliability when the data flow satisfies Markov properties. Finally, a case study is presented to illustrate the proposed network reliability model and the analysis method.