Engineering Availability in a Carrier Ethernet Network

This paper presents a method for calculating the availability of a carrier Ethernet network, and describes how to control and design network availability. It evaluates the availability of various carrier Ethernet network architectures with increasing protection, using actual reliability data, to understand the effects of redundancy at different places in the network. The paper explores these concepts and develops a relationship between cost and availability, numerically presenting the cost-versus-protection dynamic. This relationship can be concisely expressed as dollars per nine of availability and subsequently used in the development and deployment of cost-efficient Ethernet networks.