A tool for computing computer network reliability

The computation of the reliability of a computer network is one of the important tasks of evaluating its performance. The idea of minimal paths can be used to determine the network reliability. This paper presents an algorithm for finding the minimal paths of a given network in terms of its links. Then, it presents an algorithm for calculating the reliability of the network in terms of the probabilities of success of the links of its minimal paths. The algorithm is based on a relation that uses the probabilities of the unions of the minimal paths of the network to obtain the network reliability. Also, the paper describes a tool that has been built for calculating the reliability of a given network. The tool has two main phases: the minimal paths generation phase, and the reliability computation phase. The first phase accepts the links of the network and their probabilities, then implements the first proposed algorithm to determine its minimal paths. The second phase implements the second proposed algorithm to calculate the network reliability. The results of using the tool to calculate the reliability of an example network are given.