Alert-based network reconfiguration and data evacuation

Network and service disruptions could have several causes ranging from software to hardware failures, due to malicious users and/or weather-related failures. While most of the failures are unpredictable, weather-based disasters such as tornadoes, hurricanes, wildfires or floods can be often predicted well in advance, which leaves enough time for operators to prepare their networks against the incoming threat. This chapter is devoted to explore recent research concepts related to the preparation of the network when such an alert associated with weather- or human-based incoming threats is an issue. We introduce techniques for data evacuation from data centres through traditional as well as satellite networks and discuss possible reconfiguration strategies of virtual software-defined networks in order to migrate the data, virtual machines and network resources to a disaster-safe area. We also provide a quantitative comparison of recovery approaches to select the most flexible strategy depending on the disaster’s time frame.