Fast Simulation of Service Availability in Mesh Networks With Dynamic Path Restoration

A fast simulation technique based on importance sampling is developed for the analysis of path service availability in mesh networks with dynamic path restoration. The method combines the simulation of the path rerouting algorithm with a “dynamic path failure importance sampling” (DPFS) scheme to estimate path availabilities efficiently. In DPFS, the failure rates of network elements are biased at increased rates until path failures are observed under rerouting. The simulated model uses “failure equivalence groups,” with finite/infinite sources of failure events and finite/infinite pools of repair personnel, to facilitate the modeling of bidirectional link failures, multiple in-series link cuts, optical amplifier failures along links, node failures, and more general geographically distributed failure scenarios. The analysis of a large mesh network example demonstrates the practicality of the technique.