System Mtbf And Its Applications To Ip Routers

System MTBF (SMTBF) is defined and evaluated in the framework of absorbing Markov chains and performability theory. This paper is different from the previous applications of absorbing Markov models in reliability in the following two key respects. First, we have a special redundancy structure of subsystems that include silent failures and unsuccessful failovers. This structure allows us to obtain explicit expressions for SMTBF. Second, we use these expressions to analyze typical architectures and maintenance strategies for IP routers.