Maintenance Activities, Operations and Environment Conditions Impact on the Availability of Highly Reliable Optical Transport Networks

The prinary objective of this paper is to apply a new framework for integrated reliability based network design [4] to actual highly reliable network architectures (4-Fiber BLSR/DWDM architecture and (1+1) DWDM mesh architecture) using a hybrid technique that combines both analytical and simulation methods. This approach provides a comprehensive means to model and quantify the impacts of various network elements, operating conditions and protection schemes on the optical network availability and reliability [5]. The network elements are modeled based to their actual configuration. Multiple ring and mesh network designs solutions are generated and their end-to-end reliability calculated.