Disaster resilience in communication networks: part 2 [Guest Editorial]

We experience society’s growing dependence on electronic communication networks in every aspect of our lives. With this comes the expectation that communication networks are readily available all the time. Networking protocols are designed to address some simple failures, such as when a packet is dropped, a retransmission occurs, or the size of the transmission window is adjusted to accommodate congestion. Similarly, routing protocols have the functionality to route around a failure. That is, communications networks have certain built-in resilience for certain specific types of failure situations. Furthermore, networks can be designed with backup paths and capacity to protect against a failure as part of critical infrastructure protection.