Self-healing in networks with multiple reliability classes

Self‐healing has been investigated as a technique for efficient path failure restoration in VP‐based networks. This paper discusses self‐healing in networks with multiple reliability classes, and evaluates restoration performance of different failure recovery procedures that introduce priority orders in the failure recovery process based on the reliability class for each failed path. The authors present a composite‐type restoration procedure in which preplanned‐type and flooding‐type procedures are combined. This paper also presents a bumping added‐type restoration procedure. The authors evaluated the performance of the above proposed techniques assuming various failure modes. The simulation results revealed that the proposed methods show improved performance. In addition, we propose an enhanced technique that introduces a subsidiary priority criterion in the paths belonging to the same reliability class, in order to increase the number of paths to be recovered. © 2001 Scripta Technica, Electron Comm Jpn Pt 1, 84(7): 1–17, 2001