On distributed computing systems reliability analysis under program execution constraints

Presents an algorithm for computing the reliability of distributed computing systems (DCS). The algorithm, called the Fast Reliability Evaluation Algorithm, is based on the factoring theorem employing several reliability preserving reduction techniques. The effect of file distributions, program distributions, and various topologies on reliability of the DCS is studied in detail using the proposed algorithm. Compared with existing algorithms on various network topologies, file distributions, and program distributions, the proposed algorithm is much more economical in both time and space. To compute the distributed program reliability, the ARPA network is studied to illustrate the feasibility of the proposed algorithm