Optimal Component Quality Planning in Multi-State Computer Networks

Computer networks are important infrastructures required by many modern corporations today. Maintaining a reliable computer network becomes an important issue in daily business operations. A computer network usually consists of components (including links or vertices) that may have several states due to failure, partial failure or maintenance, making it a multi-state computer network (MCN). This paper proposes a novel approach to create an optimal component quality plan in MCN. Finding the optimal component quality plan for an MCN requires searching for an optimal plan such that each component in the network has the proper level of quality while the network maintains highly reliable functionality. Because the costs of quality components are diversified, an appropriate plan for component quality distribution cannot only greatly reduce the cost of network installation but also maintain the network reliability. Another important consideration is that high-quality and expensive components may not increase network reliability if they are not placed appropriately. A novel heuristic approach is proposed to efficiently search for such plan. A comparison with the implicit enumeration method is conducted. The results show that the proposed approach is very effective and efficient. Some numerical examples are illustrated and explained in detail in this paper.