A ripple-spreading algorithm for network performance assessment

To assess the performance of a network system against disturbances, existing methods are usually concerned with two different extreme situations: (i) how likely the system will degrade into some separated sub-graphs because of disturbances; (ii) how likely the 1st best paths will be cut off by disturbances. However, a more general situation, i.e., how likely those paths whose lengths are within a given range will be affected by disturbances, is barely discussed. Basically, to address this general situation, all (not just a proportion) of those paths whose lengths are within the given range must be found out between all pairs of origin and destination (OD) of interest. Unfortunately, no effective method has ever been reported to accomplish this task, although there are many methods capable of calculating all the 1st best paths between all OD pair of interest. This paper, for the first time, attempts to address the above general situation of network performance assessment. To this end, a novel ripple-spreading algorithm (RSA) is proposed to carry out a ripple relay race on the network, in order to identify all of those paths whose lengths are within the given range. Surprisingly, the proposed RSA can find all such paths between all OD pairs of interest by just a single run of ripple relay race. This work makes progress towards the general performance assessment of a network system against disturbances.