Evaluation of a controlled shared backup mechanism

For some real-time applications, it is necessary to provide a fast switch over to the backup connection whenever the primary connection fails. With the increase in reliability of network links, it is more cost effective if the backup resources are shared among a number of users. However, the sharing of backup resources must be controlled to ensure that users are provided with the required level of availability on the backup connections. In this paper, we proposed an approach for establishing backup connections based on the availability requirements of the applications and provides an evaluation on the effectiveness of such an approach.