Fundamentals of Communications and Networking, 3rd Edition

Resiliency and Redundancy

One of the assumptions of all network communications is that there is a viable route for packets to flow from a source to the intended destination. If any network segment (or node) that connects a source and a destination fails or becomes disconnected from the network, routes that include the failed segment are no longer valid. Resiliency is the ability to recover from a failure. In the case of networks, resiliency means the ability to identify alternate routes around any failures to maintain uninterrupted packet delivery. Redundancy is a key component to resiliency. Redundancy just means that there are multiple ways to carry out a task, such as transporting communication to its destination. Redundancy may duplicate ...