Statistical characteristics of serious network failures in Japan

• Published in: Reliability engineering & system safety Vol. 131; pp. 126 - 134
• Main Author: Uchida, Masato
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Elsevier Ltd 01.11.2014; Elsevier
• Subjects: Applied sciences; Computer science; control theory; systems; Computer systems and distributed systems. User interface; Economics; Exact sciences and technology; Failure; Failure duration; Failure interval; General aspects; Health; Intervals; Markets; Network failure; Networks; Number of users affected; Pareto optimality; Reliability engineering; Software; Systems, networks and services of telecommunications; Telecommunications; Telecommunications and information theory; Teletraffic; Japan; Failure interval; Number of users affected; Failure duration; Network failure; Statistical analysis; Socioeconomic activity; Teletraffic; Duration; Poisson distribution; Failures; Poisson process; Convolution; Pareto distribution; Telecommunication network; Breakdown; Social impact
• ISSN: 0951-8320; 1879-0836
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ress.2014.07.001

Due to significant environmental changes in the telecommunications market, network failures affect socioeconomic activities more than ever before. However, the health of public networks at a national level has not been investigated in detail. In this paper, we investigate the statistical characteristics of interval, duration, and the number of users affected for serious network failures, which are defined as network failures that last for more than two hours and affect more than 30,000 users, that occurred in Japan during Japanese fiscal years 2008–2012 (April 2008–March 2013). The results show that (i) the interval follows a Poisson process, (ii) the duration follows a Pareto distribution, (iii) the number of users affected follows a piecewise Pareto distribution, (iv) the product of duration and the number of users affected roughly follow a distribution that can be derived from a convolution of two distributions of duration and the number of users affected, and (v) the relationship between duration and the number of users affected differs from service to service. •The statistical characteristics of serious network failures in Japan are analyzed.•The analysis is based on public information that is available at the moment.•The interval follows a Poisson process.•The duration follows a Pareto distribution.•The number of users affected follows a piecewise Pareto distribution.