An approach on network fault correction in overlay networks

We consider an end-to-end approach of inferring probabilistic data forwarding failures in an managed overlay network, where overlay nodes are independently operated by various administrative domains. Our optimization goal is to minimize the expected cost of correcting (i.e., diagnosing and repairing) all faulty overlay nodes that cannot properly deliver data. Instead of first checking the most likely faulty nodes as in conventional fault localization problems, we prove that an optimal strategy should start with checking one of the candidate nodes, which are identified based on a potential function that we develop. We propose several efficient heuristics for inferring the best node to be checked in large-scale networks.