Fault tolerance in networks with an advance reservation service

Strategies for dealing with link failures in computer networks so far have only been discussed in the context of immediate reservations, i.e. reservations made immediately before the requested transmission commences. In contrast, advance reservation mechanisms provide the opportunity to reserve resources a longer time before a transmission starts. In such an environment, the requirement for defining strategies to deal with link failures exists, too. The differences between immediate and advance reservation mechanisms require to apply different and more complex mechanisms in order to implement fault tolerance. In this paper, we discuss the requirements for dealing with link failures in advance reservation environments. Based on these observations, in the second part of the paper strategies for handling link failures are developed and evaluated.