Causes of failure in IT telecommunications networks

Traditional techniques and models used to determine the availability and failure rates of telecommunications networks are based on classic failure models such as Mean-time between Failure and Mean-time between Service Outage predictors. Network failures occur for many different reasons and occur in many different forms. These classic models only assume that the failure is caused by a hardware component of the network. With the widespread deployment of Internet technologies other factors that cause or contribute to failure in a telecommunications network must be explored. Two additional failure modes to existing published failure models, failure from Denial of Service Attacks, and failures due to Catastrophic Events have been identified and defined along with an initial outline of a generalized prediction model based on Dynamic System Theory.