ANALYZING THE FAULT-TOLERANCE OF DOUBLE-LOOP NETWORKS

This paper analyzes the fault tolerance of a class of double-loop netw orks referred to as forward-loop backward-hop (FLBH), in which each no de is connected via unidirectional links to the node one hop in front of it and to the node S hops in back of it for some S. A new measure o f fault tolerance is described, along with techniques based on Markov chains to calculate upper and lower bounds on the fault tolerance of t his network topology quickly and efficiently. The results of these cal culations provide a more precise description of network fault toleranc e than has been achieved with previously published techniques.