Objectives
The course aims at introducing the concepts of reliability, availability, mean time to failure, mean time to repair and to apply them to the communications networks. In addition the course provides the methods for network availability analysis both in stationary and transient regime.

Syllabus
1. Availability, realiability, mean time to failure, mean time between failure, mean time to repair defintions.
2. Mathematical background: probability theory, Markov chains.
3. Combinatorial analysis applied to reliability theory.
4. System availability. Two-terminal, k-terminal, all-terminal reliability. Methods for reliability computation based on graphs and graph reducitions.
5. Probabilistic methods for availability analysis in stationary regime .
6. Probabilistic methods for availability analysis in transient regime.

Course structure
6 credits consisting in teaching and exercises. The final exam will be a written exam.