Remove and contraction: A novel method for calculating the reliability of Ethernet ring mesh networks

Reliability is a key parameter in Ethernet ring mesh networks. Therefore, an accurate analysis of reliability in Ethernet ring mesh including single or multiple rings is a main requirement. Since the calculation of reliability in such networks is an NP-hard problem, nearly most of the previous methods in this regard, were based on approximation. In this article, a new method namely, Remove and Contraction (R&C) is presented which is applicable to Ethernet ring mesh networks for precise calculation of reliability. In addition, the proposed method is a general method, which can be used for reliability analysis in other network systems as well. The analyses show the superiority of the R&C method to previous methods in terms of accuracy.