Patent ID: 6996514

Claim:
A time simulation method of determining service availability of a network with multiple failures, said network having a plurality of nodes and a plurality of links, the method comprising steps of: a) selecting a network time to fail (TTF) based on the network TTF distribution; b) maintaining failure repair and unavailability timing; c) selecting a link between two network nodes; d) performing a simulated link failure on the selected link; e) selecting a connection between a network source node and a network sink node; f) determining and summing the unavailability and availability of the selected connection under the simulated link failure condition; g) repeating steps (e), and (f) for all connections of the network; and h) repeating steps (a) to (g) until either a link failure has been simulated on all links of the network or the summed availability has been determined to converge to a constant value, whichever is earlier.