Implementing the Availability Model of a Software-Defined Backbone Network in M\"obius

TL;DR

This paper presents an implementation of a two-level availability model for SDN backbone networks in M"obius, aiming to assess their reliability compared to traditional networks through detailed structural and dynamic analysis.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive two-level availability model for SDN backbones, including failure correlation, implemented in M"obius for detailed reliability assessment.

Findings

Model captures global network connectivity effectively

Includes failure correlation assessment

Enables comparison with traditional backbone networks

Abstract

Software-defined networking (SDN) promises to improve the programmability and flexibility of networks, but it may bring also new challenges that need to be explored. One open issue is the quantitative assessment of the properties of SDN backbone networks to determine whether they can provide similar availability to the traditional IP backbone networks. To achieve this goal, a two-level availability model that is able to capture the global network connectivity without neglecting the essential details and which includes a failure correlation assessment should be considered. The two-level availability model is composed by a structural model and the dynamic models of the principal minimal-cut sets of the network. The purpose of this technical report is to extensively present the implementation on M\"obius of the Stochastic Activity Network (SAN) availability model of the network elements and the principal minimal-cut sets of a SDN backbone network and the corresponding traditional backbone network.