Efforts to Standardize Resiliency Metrics

for the Undersea Cable Infrastructure

Prepared for: Telcordia Contacts:

Spilios E. Makris, Ph.D.Director, Olympic Program

Network Reliability & Risk Services

smakris@telcordia.com

+1 732 758-2029

Nick Lordi, MBASenior Director, Applied Research

nlj@research.telcordia.com

+1 732 758-4019

Melvin Gail Linnell, Ph.D.Principal Analyst, Network & Operations

mlinnell@telcordia.com

+1 732 758-2191

May 12, 2011

CQR 2011

Background, Observations, and Considerations

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Background information

ATIS Standards Outage Index for wireline, cable TV, wireless, & satellite

telecommunications service outages

ROGUCCI Global Summit (Dubai Oct. 27-29, 2009) recommendations

Overview of current Undersea Cable Infrastructure (UCI) related

efforts at ATIS Performance, Reliability, Quality Committee (PRQC)

Factors influencing UCI resiliency

Metrics associated with these factors

A method of visualizing these metrics in a single diagram

Future considerations

Outline

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ATIS-PRQC Issue # A0053 opened on Dec. 2, 2009

“Need for a new Technical Report (TR) on Metrics to Assess the

Reliability of the Undersea Cable Infrastructure (UCI)”

Telcordia actively participated with contributions &

discussions at PRQC to achieve real progress on TR

TR was letter balloted (PRQC-LB-070) on March 16, 2011

TR No. ATIS-0100031 [pre-pub]; Approved March 2011

“A Method to Display Metrics Related to the Resiliency of the

Undersea Cable Infrastructure”

Overview of Current UCI-related Efforts at PRQC

Global Undersea Cable Infrastructure (UCI):

“Choke Points”

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“Choke Points” are areas of high concentration of undersea cables

and high risk of cable faults (natural or man-made)

Example of a Service Provider Mesh Network

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Natural Hazards

Submarine earthquakes & landslides

Waves & ocean currents

Tsunami & storm surges

Extreme weather (e.g., hurricanes)

Icebergs or volcanic activity

Climate change

Policy

Lack of ASPR (Agreements,

Standards, Policies, Regulations)

Boundary limitations

Law enforcement limitations

Permitting delays

UCI: Examples of General Risks

Man-made Hazards

Fishing activity

Ship anchors

UCI as a potential target for physical attacks

(i.e., theft of copper in Southeast Asia)

Other Areas of Potential Risks

Component failure

Variability of time-to-repair undersea cable

systems

Quality of “backhaul” (i.e., richness of landing

station connectivity to carrier “hotels”)

Close proximity of cable landing stations to

one another

Trade-offs during cable system design &

implementation

Typical Submarine Cable System

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Source: Fujitsu

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Grouping of Systems for Indexing Regions (9)

Routes

North America – Europe

North America – Asia

North America – Caribbean / South America

Europe – Middle East / Asia

Europe – Africa

Factors Affecting Resiliency, Reliability, & Growth Number of paths within the defined region or route

Lit bandwidth

Potential bandwidth

Connectivity between Systems

History of outages

Availability of repair capabilities

UCI: Factors and Consideration

Undersea Cable Regions

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MSR

SAR

CSR

NSR

NAR

IOR

SER

NPR

SPRSPR

Source: Alcatel-Lucent

North Atlantic

Region (NAR)North/ Baltic Sea

Region (NSR)

Mediterranean Sea

Region (MSR)

North Pacific

Region (NPR)

South Atlantic

Region (SAR)

Indian Ocean/

Red Sea Region

(IOR)

South East Asia

Region (SER)

South Pacific

Region (SPR)Caribbean Sea

Region (CSR)

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The proposed metrics are grouped in 3 categories:

Resiliency: the ability to adapt to an outage and restore

services (e.g., Internet, private line, etc.)

Reliability: the ability of the regional undersea cable

infrastructure to consistently deliver end-to-end service(s)

without degradation or failure

Growth: the ability to expand capacity in a timely manner to

meet increased demand (this expansion capacity reflects

near-term growth potential)

UCI: Selection of Parameters for Robustness

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Resiliency

A1 (Number of Hubs) = a scaled value of the number of landing station

areas (Hub) with 3 or more systems landing within the same city

(more is better). This metric would reflect the availability of locations for

rerouting during a failure.

A2 = a scaled value of the average number of cable landing stations

per system (more is better). When a system lands at multiple locations,

the availability of synergy increases.

A3 = a scaled value of the number of disjoint paths in the region/route

(more is better). When multiple routes are available, the effects of a single

failure are reduced (i.e., reduced chance of a single point of failure).

A4 = a scaled value of the average number of systems per Hub (see

A1). This factor indicates whether there is an appropriate quantity and

diversity of UCI systems supported at the Hubs.

UCI: Resiliency Metrics - 1

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Reliability

A5 = a scaled valued related to the number of outage events per

region/route within the past 36 months (less the better).

This metric reflects the risks associated with the region/route.

A6 = a scaled value related to the maximum number of systems affected

by a single event within the past 36 months (less the better).

This metric would reflect the severity of risks within the region/route.

A7 = a scaled valued related to the ratio of cable repair ships available

in a region or for a route (more the better) to the number of paths in that

region/route (see A3).

Availability of repair capabilities reduces the expected downtime if an event

occurs.

UCI: Reliability Metrics - 2

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Growth

A8 = a scaled valued related to the ratio of un-lit capacity

to total capacity (higher is better, has more growth

potential)

UCI: Growth Metrics - 3

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Standardized in ITU-T Recommendation P.505 for use

in displaying a set of transmission measurements

associated with a communication experience

Quick & easy recognition of parameters with undesirable

values

Assessment of strengths and weaknesses of routes or

regions relative to others

Easy comparison of different routes or regions based on the

corresponding representations

Easy extension of the representation by new parameters

relevant to robustness in the future

ITU-T “One View Visualization” Methodology

One View Visualization: Example Star

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Presents an independent representation of individual

robustness parameters

Segment sizes are determined by the number of

selected parameters and are identical

Segment size (radius) is a measure for the robustness

of the route regarding this parameter

By means of a suitable:

Axis scaling, a concentric circle around the origin can be

defined which represents a minimum resiliency measure

Color selection results lying within the tolerance or

transgressing the limit values can be easily visualized

One View Visualization: Advantages

Future Considerations

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Socialize proposed UCI metrics with stakeholders:

Submarine cable owners / operators

Carriers that lease service from the owner/operators

Enterprise or government entities that lease services from the carriers

Other standards bodies

Derive a UCI Outage Index to complement the existing* Outage

Index for wireline, wireless, cable TV, & satellite

telecommunications service outages used by industry/FCC

ATIS PRQC follow-up work to UCI-related TR No. ATIS-0100031

* “Analysis of FCC-reportable Service Outage Data”, ATIS-0100021, June 2008