PyRBD: An Open-Source Reliability Block Diagram Evaluation Tool

Reliability Block Diagrams (RBDs) are pictorial representations that evaluate a system's availability by considering its components and their interconnections. In communication networks, a flow's availability is evaluated using the network's RBD. However, there are no open-source tools to evaluate complex networks' RBDs. We present an open-source tool, PyRBD, to (i) generate RBDs from topologies, (ii) decompose RBDs for faster processing, and (iii) calculate flow availabilities. PyRBD's effectiveness was measured on five topologies based on simulation time and complexity. Additionally, single-core and multicore implementations were studied. Though the use-case in this work is networks, PyRBD is suitable for any system.