Chapter 3. Measuring Network Complexity

Given these four fundamental aspects of complexity—state, speed, surface, and optimization—it only makes sense to measure these four points and generate a single number describing the overall complexity of a given design and deployment structure. It would be nice if there were some way to examine a proposed network design, or a proposed change to a network design, and be able to assign actual numbers to the complexity of each component so the complexity can be compared to any potential gain in performance, or the loss of complexity in one area can be compared to the gain in complexity in another. If it were only that simple.

As it turns out, the effort to measure complexity is, itself, quite complex.

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