Economic Analysis of Robust Access Network Architectures in Two-Tier Data Networks

Digital network robustness has recently emerged as a main concern of network providers as a means to improve user-perceived network performance through session continuity under link failure. This paper presents an analysis of the economic and robustness-related trade-offs of three access network topologies in two-tier data packet networks: single, multiple and direct access- to-access homing. 

Access networks provide protocol handling and concentration of traffic and need to be highly reliable; traffic can then be effectively handled by a high-capacity backbone network through a variety of topological access arrangements.