Net Solver: a software tool for the design of survivable networks

Major interruptions of service in large metropolitan areas have demonstrated a need to design survivable networks. Of course, these networks must be of low cost to be practical. We present a software tool, called Net Solver, that designs survivable networks based on the self-healing ring architecture. Our tool iteratively finds a good ring cover and routing for all point-to-point traffic on a given network. The solutions produced by Net Solver are 10-50% better than those initially chosen or than those produced by hand. We have implemented a prototype that runs on a PC. The solutions are obtained in seconds or minutes, and include the rings, link capacities, routing and global cost.