Guide to Reliable Internet Services and Applications

An oft-repeated adage among telecommunication providers goes, "There are ve things that matter: reliability, reliability, reliability, time to market, and cost. If you can't do all ve, at least do the rst three. " Yet, designing and operating reliable networks and services is a Herculean task. Building truly reliable components is unacceptably expensive, forcing us to c- struct reliable systems out of unreliable components. The resulting systems are inherently complex, consisting of many different kinds of components running a variety of different protocols that interact in subtle ways. Inter-networkssuch as the Internet span multiple regions of administrative control, from campus and cor- rate networks to Internet Service Providers, making good end-to-end performance a shared responsibility borne by sometimes uncooperative parties. Moreover, these networks consist not only of routers, but also lower-layer devices such as optical switches and higher-layer components such as rewalls and proxies. And, these components are highly con gurable, leaving ample room for operator error and buggy software. As if that were not dif cult enough, end users understandably care about the performance of their higher-level applications, which has a complicated relationship with the behavior of the underlying network. Despite these challenges, researchers and practitioners alike have made trem- dous strides in improving the reliability of modern networks and services.

This comprehensive guide addresses the challenges faced by service providers and the approaches they use to deliver reliable networks and networked application services. A number of questions accompany each topic to enable self-assessment.

Comprehensive coverage on all aspects of reliability and fault tolerance in networks is presented

and Reliable Network Design.- The Challenges of Building Reliable Networks and Networked Application Services.- Structural Overview of ISP Networks.- Reliability Modeling and Network Planning.- Reliability Metrics for Routers in IP Networks.- Network Performability Evaluation.- Robust Network Planning.- Interdomain Reliability and Overlay Networks.- Interdomain Routing and Reliability.- Overlay Networking and Resiliency.- Configuration Management.- Network Configuration Management.- Network Configuration Validation.- Network Measurement.- Measurements of Data Plane Reliability and Performance.- Measurements of Control Plane Reliability and Performance.- Network and Security Management, and Disaster Preparedness.- Network Management: Fault Management, Performance Management, and Planned Maintenance.- Network Security - A Service Provider View.- Disaster Preparedness and Resiliency.- Reliable Application Services.- Building Large-Scale, Reliable Network Services.- Capacity and Performance Engineering for Networked Application Servers: A Case Study in E-mail Platform Planning.