Methodology for Calculating the Reliability of Devices in Telecommunication Network
Abstract
This paper develops a structured methodology for calculating the reliability of telecommunication network devices at the design stage by explicitly incorporating hardware redundancy and node load. The proposed approach combines three elements: construction of a cluster-based model of the network, ergodic analysis of random operational and idle states of devices to obtain the expected time to failure, and graph-based decomposition of equipment into sub-elements for hardware reliability evaluation. In contrast to conventional point estimation techniques, the method jointly accounts for device fault tolerance, the interaction of nodes within clusters, and the relative contribution of individual components to overall availability. The methodology is illustrated on a local area network and compared with a standard calculation procedure, showing how the developed model reveals the dominance of specific devices in the reliability of the entire network and avoids overestimation of availability under non-uniform load. The proposed framework can be used when designing fault-tolerant architectures for corporate and service-provider telecommunication networks.