Abstract
A reliability evaluating method for a multi-state flow network and a system thereof are presented. The method includes following steps: finding candidate path sets included in the multi-state flow network; converting the candidate path sets into candidate path values according to a prime number function; removing the repeated candidate path values to keep the corresponded candidate path sets as the non-repeated minimal path; calculating the reliability of the multi-state flow network based on the data flow and data load of the minimal path sets.