Home // International Journal On Advances in Telecommunications, volume 6, numbers 3 and 4, 2013 // View article

A Reliability and Survivability Analysis of US Local Telecommunication Switches

Authors:
Andrew Snow
Aimee Shyirambere
Julio Arauz
Gary Weckman

Keywords: reliability; reliability trends; public switched telephone network; local telecommunication switches

Abstract:
This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the reliability and survivability of US local telecommunication switches over a 14-year study period (from 1996 to 2009). Using local switch outage empirical data, the causes, failure trends and impacts have been identified, analyzed and assessed. A total of 12,860 switch outages were investigated for which very significant reliability growth was identified over the study period. Outages were also studied temporally, from time of day, day of week, and month of year perspectives. Additionally, 2,623 of the outages were found to come from only 156 unique switches, each of which experienced eight or more outages over the study period. The data were separated into two categories, for comparison: more frequently failing switches and less frequently failing switches. Major findings are that scheduled maintenance activities and hardware failures are the major causes of outages in local telecommunication switches; there are significant causality differences between more frequently and less frequently failing switches; and there are considerable differences in switch characteristics between the more and less frequently failing switches. Additionally, the manufacturers of the more frequently out switches are identified.

Pages: 81 to 97

Copyright: Copyright (c) to authors, 2013. Used with permission.

Publication date: December 31, 2013

Published in: journal

ISSN: 1942-2601