Designing reliable communication networks in a planned failure environment

A very important issue in many network applications is to provide protection against planned failures. In this paper we first define the concept of a planned failure and then analyze the cost implications in the design of a network for survivability (i.e. protection against planned failure), as against designing a network against random failures. We suggest a simple and systematic approach for designing survivable communication networks and also discuss briefly the consequences of availability of partial knowledge only.