Resilience in Communication Networks

Given Society's increasing dependence on communication networks, the Internet and their services, vulnerabilities of communication networks and the Internet can significantly impact our lives. The dependence on communication networks and the Internet makes them an attractive target for attacks and intrusions attempting to either obtain information or disrupt service of individuals, businesses, government and military. These networks and services are also susceptible to accidents, faults or natural disasters that can disrupt service. In the face of these difficulties, the need for greater resilience has been recognized for wireline and wireless networks and for the Internet. Resilience has classically been defined as the ability of the network to provide and maintain an acceptable level of service in the face of faults, accidents, attacks and natural disasters. Today, resilience can be considered an essential characteristic in the design and operation of networks to withstand the intrusions described above. Furthermore, we must now expand resilience to include new requirements, such as scalability, dynamic and opportunistic topologies, and global interoperation and interdependence among networks.

This book presents the characteristics of resilient communication networks, highlighting existing communication technologies that can be employed to dependence on communication networks, the Internet and their services, vulnerabilities of communication networks can significantly impact our lives. Hence, it is a prominent interest to create solutions to keep the communication resilient to accidents, faults or natural disasters that can disrupt service. Resilience has classically been defined as the ability of the network to provide and maintain an acceptable level of service in the face of faults, accidents, attacks and natural disasters. Today, resilience can be considered an essential characteristic in the design and operation of networks to withstand vulnerabilities described above. Furthermore, we must now expand resilience to include new requirements, such as scalability, dynamic and opportunistic topologies, and global interoperation and interdependence among networks. This book present few examples related to the design of resilience solutions taking into account those new requirements.