Network Protection Design Using Network Coding

TL;DR

This paper explores the design of network protection strategies using network coding, establishing limits, identifying suitable network topologies, and constructing minimal-edge graphs for effective protection against failures.

Contribution

It introduces limits on network protection code deployment, investigates applicable network graphs, and constructs minimal-edge graphs for protection.

Findings

Established theoretical limits for NPC deployment

Identified network topologies suitable for NPC

Constructed minimal-edge graphs for protection

Abstract

Link and node failures are two common fundamental problems that affect operational networks. Protection of communication networks against such failures is essential for maintaining network reliability and performance. Network protection codes (NPC) are proposed to protect operational networks against link and node failures. Furthermore, encoding and decoding operations of such codes are well developed over binary and finite fields. Finding network topologies, practical scenarios, and limits on graphs applicable for NPC are of interest. In this paper, we establish limits on network protection design. We investigate several network graphs where NPC can be deployed using network coding. Furthermore, we construct graphs with minimum number of edges suitable for network protection codes deployment.