Gerard Nguengang

Operator-driven framework for establishing and unifying autonomic network and service management solutions

It is commonly recognized that the technology progress, dynamism but also complexity of telecommunication networks and services increase with rapid paces. Such challenges cannot be efficiently handled by traditional networking and management schemes. Autonomics in network and services management appear as the most viable way out. However, despite the significant research efforts and achievements in this field, a few and only recently start to convince operators for their deployability. In this direction, UniverSelf is a research initiative which proposes a pragmatic solution for overcoming the increasing complexity a) by consolidating and capitalizing on lessons learnt and b) by identifying and solving actual, first-priority, immediate and mid-term manageability problems encountered by operators. The cornerstone of UniverSelf approach is the Unified Management Framework (UMF), an operator-driven framework that designates processes, tools and methods for establishing (legacy, emerging and yet undiscovered) autonomic solutions in the joint management of networks and services. This paper provides a first concise description of the UMF design in terms of core, reusable and cohesive functional blocks and interfaces, as derives from the elaboration of requirements elicited from a set of operator problems (use cases). The design is complemented by principles and goals that address important high-level challenges such as the unification/federation of diverse autonomic solutions and technology domains, the governance of autonomic infrastructures and services, as well as the embodiment of autonomic solutions (intelligence) into the management ecosystem.

Core functional and network empower mechanisms of an operator-driven, framework for unifying autonomic network and service management

Future Internet (FI) constitutes a complex and dynamic environment, the requirements of which cannot be adrressed by traditional management schemes. The alternative is the approach of autonomic network and service management. In this context, the UniverSelf research project proposes a promising solution, called Unified Management Framework (UMF), which targets the unification of autonomic network and service management. UMF addresses FI challenges by exploiting governance of automatically managed infrastructures and services, unification of diverse autonomic solutions, and adaptation to rapidly changing environment with respect to managed system properties and service and users requirements. Accordingly, this paper presents the UMF core blocks, namely Governance, Coordination and Knowledge blocks, including a description of their underlying mechanisms. The paper also describes the Network Empowerment Mechanisms (NEM) that empower networks with autonomic algorithms/solutions and can be embedded into existing and future systems in a “plug and play” way.

A survey of autonomic networking architectures: towards a Unified Management Framework

SUMMARY Academic and industrial research initiatives have sought to make fully autonomic networks a reality. Some of these initiatives pursued a holistic approach, while others focused on setting up functionalities for specific networking domains. These efforts did not succeed in being extensively deployed, because the goals of network operators were not satisfactorily met. These goals include unification of management operations, enablement of end-to-end management and enhancement of the overall system performance in a trusted way, while reducing management cost. In this paper, we analyse a set of existing autonomic management architectures and frameworks with respect to a selected set of criteria. We then identify missing parts and challenges and propose a framework to unify the most promising attributes towards a novel approach of realization of autonomic networking management. We call this proposal Unified Management Framework (UMF). Copyright

Identifying standardization opportunities of an operator-driven, framework for unifying autonomic network and service management

The increasing dynamism, complexity and challenges of networks and services cannot be handled by traditional management schemes. The alternative is the approach of autonomic network and service management. In this context, the UniverSelf research project proposes a promising solution, called Unified Management Framework (UMF) with the goal to unify and establish autonomics in the management of networks and services. UMF provides the processes, tools and methods for achieving unification of diverse autonomic solutions, governance of automatically managed infrastructures and services, and “plug and play” of autonomic solutions within existing and future management ecosystems. Despite the soundness of UMF vision from the research point of view, careful and well planned roadmap towards standardization is required in order to boost its deployability and operator adoption. Accordingly, this paper first describes the approach followed for the design of UMF and the set of functional blocks derived as an outcome of this approach. Based on the elaboration and evolution of these functional blocks, the focus is then placed on three components namely, governance, knowledge, coordination, which comprise the so called UMF core and will monopolize the effort towards deriving the upcoming releases of UMF. The standardization opportunities of UMF can be actually indentified while looking into these components and their associated interfaces.

A Cognitive Management Framework for Empowering the Internet of Things

This work presents a Cognitive Management framework for empowering the Internet of Things (IoT). This framework has the ability to dynamically adapt its behaviour, through self-management functionality, taking into account information and knowledge (obtained through machine learning) on the situation (e.g., internal status and status of environment), as well as policies (designating objectives, constraints, rules, etc.). Cognitive technologies constitute a unique and efficient approach for addressing the technological heterogeneity of the IoT and obtaining situation awareness, reliability and efficiency. The paper also presents a first indicative implementation of the proposed framework, comprising real sensors and actuators. The preliminary results of this work demonstrate high potential towards self-reconfigurable IoT.

Building Knowledge Lifecycle and Situation Awareness in Self-Managed Cognitive Future Internet Networks

This paper describes aspects for developing cognitive functionalities in self-managed networks according to the vision of the Future Internet networks being developed in the Self-NET project. The project develops and prototypes architecture and solutions for realising a vision on Internet evolution based on integration of cognition and autonomics in self-managed networks demonstrated in numerous and diverse use-cases developed. Two specific topics are investigated in the paper as they present the building blocks of this development. The first topic is definition and formulation of the knowledge lifecycle in self-managed networks and the second one is on building situation awareness in such networks as a ubiquitous concept in dynamic control. Both of the topics are interrelated and are crucial elements of building cognitive networks primarily as their resolving and definition demonstrate the practical side of applying diverse available work on the topics and provide a focus for their understanding and development.

A policy based framework for governing Future networks

Future Internet will constitute a complex and dynamic environment, the requirements of which cannot be handled by traditional management schemes. The alternative is the approach of autonomic service and network management, which targets at guidance and orchestration of the behavior of autonomic and contemporary network entities based on specific service requirements and business goals. In this context, policies can constitute a means for accomplishing the desired high level control in autonomic management. In order to achieve this objective, an advanced policy framework, confronting the challenges of the highly miscellaneous, decentralized and dynamic Future Internet, is needed. To this effect, this paper presents the main challenges of policy-based management in the context of governing the autonomic Future Internet, and based on their elaboration, the focus is placed on existing concepts that can constitute the basis for the design of a proper policy management framework. The paper also describes the functional specification of the policy management framework, deriving from the presented challenges, and instantiation of the policy framework on an illustrative scenario.

Intelligent Routing Scheme in Home Networks

Apart from ethernet, both wired and wireless technologies involved in home networking are prone to bandwidth fluctuations mostly due to interferences with others home devices or appliances. Channels characteristics are time variant and environment sensitive. Mobility and end devices density in a wireless cell may collapse available network resources. Therefore, quality of service provision for delay sensitive multimedia applications in such an unstable and dynamic network environment is important since there is no way to ensure that a reserved resource will maintain the required level of service over time. This paper presents an intelligent routing scheme based on the multi-agent system technology. Agents are embedded in nodes and cooperate to build alternatives routes. These routes are used as backup routes when those defined by the routing protocol become inadequate.

Situation awareness mechanisms for cognitive networks

The paper provides a study of situation awareness mechanisms in modern telecommunication networks on the essential basis of the actual Self-NET research Project effort. Since cognition has today become one of the key features of most systems, novel mechanisms for identification, comprehension and corresponding reaction to altering environmental conditions are continuously being developed. The necessity of situation awareness techniques as well as potential ways for their realization is pointed out, in the broader context of the Future Internet.

Lightweight tag-based forwarding among competing gateways in Wireless Mesh Networks

Wireless Mesh Networks have been traditionally deployed to offer Internet access. Following the general trend of convergence, they must increasingly provide customers with communication services whose quality constraints are heterogeneous. For large scale deployments, access to the Internet is provided by multiple gateways installed at different points in the network. Each gateway may be connected to the Internet with different technologies (ADSL, Ethernet, satellite, HF link) offering several alternatives to get out of the network with heterogeneous and dynamic performances. Routing QoS-constrained flows so that they always benefit from the best quality available is a challenging task. In addition to an intelligent gateway selection, it requires a forwarding system able to dynamically balance each flow towards the most suitable gateway. Existing candidates generate unnecessary complexity and overhead. In this paper, we propose a distributed and lightweight tag-based forwarding scheme that brings the flexibility required to work at the flow level, and supports dynamic traffic balancing among gateways with various bandwidth, delay or jitter characteristics. We implemented our forwarding scheme on an experimental testbed and applied it to the enforcement of simple gateway selection strategies. Results demonstrate the interest of our approach and its efficiency to dynamically forward specific flows among competing gateways.