Communication network failures that are caused by disasters, such as hurricanes, earthquakes and cyber-attacks, can have significant economic and societal impact. To address this problem, the research community has been investigating approaches to network resilience for several years. However, aside from well-established techniques, many of these solutions have not found their way into operational environments. The RECODIS COST Action aims to address this shortcoming by providing solutions that are tailored to specific types of challenge, whilst considering the wider socio-economic issues that are associated with their deployment. To support this goal, in this paper, we present an overview of some of the foundational related work on network resilience, covering topics such as measuring resilience and resilient network architectures, amongst others. In addition, we provide insights into current operational best practices for ensuring the resilience of carrier-grade communication networks. The aim of this paper is to support the goals of the EU COST Action RECODIS and the wider research community in engineering more resilient communication networks.