A novel algorithm for freeing network from points of failure

Abstract

A network design may have many points of failure, the failure of any of which breaks up the network into two or more parts, thereby disrupting the communication between the nodes. This paper presents a heuristic for making an existing network more reliable by adding new communication links between certain nodes. The algorithm ensures the absence of any point of failure after addition of addition of minimal number of communication links determined by the algorithm. The paper further presents theoretical proofs and results which prove the minimality of the number of new links added in the network. © 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.