David A. Garbin
Senior Fellow, Noblis
Presentation: Measuring Resilience in Network-Based Infrastructures: How to Analyze and Design High-Availability Networks
Noblis Technology Tuesdays
June 22, 2010
A key component in the ability of the United States to survive the effects of catastrophic events, both natural and man-made, is the ability of our critical infrastructures to function following such events. Redundancy of key functions and the robust interconnection of components through networking improves the ability of the infrastructure to fulfill its mission under damage. For network-based infrastructures, there is a non-trivial relationship between component failure and consequences of the failure. Networks have many alternate paths and, in theory, can be very robust with respect to component failures. However, given the high cost of constructing facilities, network operators are carrying more and more traffic along fewer and fewer physical facilities, often creating unknown single points of failure. This presentation addresses the vulnerabilities of networks and provides a framework for the design and analysis of high-availability networks.