Structure-Based Resilience Metrics for Service-Oriented Networks

Many governmental agencies and businesses organizations use networked systems to provide a number of services. Such a service-oriented network can be implemented as an overlay on top of the physical network. It is well recognized that the performance of many of the networked computer systems is severely degraded under node and edge failures. The focus of our work is on the resilience of service-oriented networks. We develop a graph theoretic model for service-oriented networks. Using this model, we propose metrics that quantify the resilience of such networks under node and edge failures. These metrics are based on the topological structure of the network and the manner in which services are distributed over the network. Based on this framework, we address two types of problems. The first type involves the analysis of a given network to determine its resilience parameters. The second type involves the design of networks with a given degree of resilience. We present efficient algorithms for both types of problems. Our approach for solving analysis problems relies on known algorithms for computing minimum cuts in graphs. Our algorithms for the design problem are based on a careful analysis of the decomposition of the given graph into appropriate types of connected components.