Delivering Dependable Telecommunication Services Using Off-the-Shelf System Components

• Authors: Y. Levendel
• Venue: Journal of Electronic Testing: Theory and Applications - Special issue on On-line testing
• Year: 1998

For decades, traditional telecommunication systems havereliably delivered telephony services using expensive equipmentand software. In spite of large R&D expenses, the end customercosts remained low due to the amortization of the equipment over a large population of users. With the advent of low cost and high performance computers, it has become conceivable to deliversimilar and more powerful services using systems constructed withoff-the-shelf components. The only obstacle remaining to make thisa reality is the ability of system designers to provide rationabledependability of such systems. This paper illustrates one possibleavenue for performing this task and identifies a condition that isnecessary for the deployment of such systems, namely thecomponents must in turn provide measures of survivability.