Order-P: an algorithm to order network partitionings

A network partitioning occurs when failures fragment the network into at least 2 sub-networks. This causes the network performance to degrade; many techniques have been proposed to combat this degradation. The number of possible partitionings in a fully connected network of n nodes is greater than 2´´, for large n. Thus, analysis of partitioning-resilient algorithms is extremely difficult due to the difficulty of computing the probabilities of occurrence of the partitionings. The authors propose an algorithm that orders network partitionings in decreasing order of probability. This algorithm is similar to the Most Probable State Enumeration (MPSE) algorithm of Li & Silvester (1984). By looking at only the most probable partitionings, the performance of the network can be estimated well. This approach also gives bounds on the network performance. Two distinct equally-important goals have been attained: the algorithm Order-P is proposed, and the algorithm is applied in the real world and demonstrates its value in performance modeling of distributed systems