A General Framework for Network Survivability Testing and Evaluation

The survivability of network is of vital importance with respect to the normal operation of information infrastructure. The current research works in the area of network survivability generally aimed at the definitions and quantifications of specific survivability attributes or metrics for distinct network objects. Unfortunately, there is a lack of research concerning how to model, test and evaluate the survivability of network in a consistent manner, and it is helpful to the unification of network survivability testing and evaluation and the promotion of related research works in the area of network survivability. Furthermore, the requirements for network survivability testing and evaluation are variable among different application domains. Therefore, a flexible mechanism to support the customizable testing and evaluation of network survivability is needed. In this paper, we propose a unified framework for network survivability testing and evaluation which is extensible and customizable. The customization method of network survivability measurement model and the general process of network survivability testing and evaluation are analyzed in detail. The testing of network survivability is performed based upon specific network survivability measurement model, and the associated test scheme containing a set of test cases are generated. The evaluation of network survivability is performed based upon the quantification results of network survivability metrics, and multiple criteria decision making method is utilized to evaluate network survivability. The experimental results show the generality and practicability of the framework and the effectiveness of proposed network survivability test model and evaluation method.