Continuous open design of dependable systems for critical infrastructure

Future network infrastructure systems demand an extensible, continuous design framework to readily incorporate emerging technologies. Other domains have addressed this demand by moving towards an open design and development approach to capture the ingenuity of a community of developers. Yet, the design and development of current network infrastructure systems remains predominately closed. In this paper, we detail the trends in the deossification of network infrastructure, explore the challenges of an open design and development approach and suggest a framework to address these trends and challenges. The main contribution of this work is a tool-supported, open architectural design and analysis approach with a comprehensive dependability analysis tool for the design of dependable, fault-resilient systems capable of ensuring the high assurance properties required in network infrastructure systems.