Modeling and Reliability Analysis of a Redundant Transport System in a Markovian Environment.

We consider the multipath communication between a client and a server that is established at the transport and session layers of an SDN/NFV protocol stack in a fog computing scenario. We analyze the reliability function of an associated redundant transport system comprising two logical channels that are susceptible to failures. The failure processes of both channels are described by Markov-modulated failure times that are driven by the transitions of a common Markovian environment. We model the error-prone system with repair and independent phase-type distributed repair times by a continuous-time Markov chain. We identify its generator matrix in terms of Kronecker products of the underlying parameter matrices that are determined by the interarrival times driven by Markov-modulated failure processes and the independent phase-type distributed repair times. We show that the steady-state distribution of the restoration model can be effectively calculated by an iterative aggregation-disaggregation method for block matrices and compute the associated reliability function of the transport system by a uniformization method.