1. CSC/ECE 772: Survivable Networks
Spring, 2009
Rudra Dutta

2. CSC/ECE 772 About the course Subject of interest Background
Copyright Rudra Dutta, NCSU, Spring, 2009

3. About the Course

4. About CSC/ECE 772
Understand network/service continuity principles, issues, constraints
(descriptive: what's out there, work in progress)
Evaluate alternatives, strengths, weaknesses
(critical: what's wrong with... ?, how else can we do... ?)
Ability to design and implement relevant protocols
(skill-oriented: projects)
Ability to perform original research
(research-oriented: research presentations, literature report)
Copyright Rudra Dutta, NCSU, Spring, 2009

5. Grading (tentative) 3 Programming Projects: 45%
(grade will be based on code, report, performance results)
Research Presentation: 15%
(in-class presentation on 1-2 research papers)
Literature Report: 20%
(report on a research area within the field of network survivability)
Final Exam: 20%
(take-home exam; based on lectures, reading assignments)
Class Participation
(attend class and actively participate in discussion)
Copyright Rudra Dutta, NCSU, Spring, 2009

6. Subject of Interest

7. Overview Continuity is an important goal in networks
It has to be designed toward
Involving better components, redundancy
Design may be informed by optimization goals
Not all things may be equally worth protecting
There are various options in design approach
Different viewpoints, some correlated
Metrics needed to evaluate how good design is
In evaluating, original design goals must be considered
Restoring connectivity only
Restoring capacity also - Bandwidth, switching, buffers
Copyright Rudra Dutta, NCSU, Spring, 2009

8. Historical Development
Equipment makers/carriers historically concerned with reliability
In the past, attention to ensure certain levels of availability
Transition equipment redundantly designed
Network as a whole not considered
No expectation of split-second recovery
Failures above these levels -> service outage until:
Repair was completed, or
Manual effort at partial rerouting was completed
Human involvement - additional errors
Current goal of fault tolerance:
Instantaneous recovery from most significant/frequent failures
Eliminate human involvement
Growth in use of communication services
Fiber optic technology
Competition - survivability a differentiating factor
Copyright Rudra Dutta, NCSU, Spring, 2009

9. Background Topics Network provisioning and resource design
Optimization, complexity
System Reliability
Copyright Rudra Dutta, NCSU, Spring, 2009

10. Course Modality Initially - lectures
To cover background topics
Fundamentals of survivability
(Catch up on:
“Research how-to”
“Reading how-to”
On instructor’s website)
Then - Group readings - informal presentations
Close - Individual topics to present formally
Written report accompanying individual topics
End - Take-home final
Copyright Rudra Dutta, NCSU, Spring, 2009

11. Research Report Focus on a specific topic
Research, standardization, implementation
Must represent state-of-art
Expected to read several papers (15-20)
Deliver an authoritative, informative, synthesis
Organize and classify prior work
Describe important problems
Summarize and critique solution approaches and results
List open problems
Conference-quality report
Competent writing
Suitable technical style
page limit
Copyright Rudra Dutta, NCSU, Spring, 2009

12. Research Presentation
One formal presentation by each student
Interactive counterpart to research report
Graded
Preceded by short informal presentations throughout semester, not planned to be graded
Must identify 2-3 key papers at least one week in advance for all to read
Others allowed to submit questions beforehand
Or bring to presentation
Must educate and inform
Enable audience to answer their own questions by the end
Plan for about 45 minutes, plus discussion
Copyright Rudra Dutta, NCSU, Spring, 2009

13. Informal Presentations
Instructor will announce papers
“Primary” readers announced
Representative questions may be announced
Papers will be jointly read in class
Primary readers must be prepared to answer questions, make short explanation / presentation
Bring slides or handouts only if you have to
Preferably plan to use whiteboard only
Several related papers will be read in a single lecture period
Expect to discuss to find the similar and dissimilar features of the papers w.r.t. area, problem, methodology, solution
Copyright Rudra Dutta, NCSU, Spring, 2009

14. Representative Sources
R. K. Ahuja, T. L. Magnanti, J. B. Orlin, Network Flows. Prentice-Hall, 1993
R. Bhandari, Survivable Networks: Algorithms for Diverse Routing. Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999
W. D. Grover, Mesh-Based Survivable Transport Networks: Options and Strategies for Optical, MPLS, SONET and ATM networking. Prentice Hall, 2003
K. Trivedi, Probability and Statistics with Reliability, Queueing and Computer Science Applications. Wiley Interscience, 2002
M. Pioro, D. Medhi, Routing, Flow, and Capacity Design in Communication and Computer Networks. Morgan Kauffmann, 2004
Copyright Rudra Dutta, NCSU, Spring, 2009