Spyros G. Denazis

A policy-based management architecture for active and programmable networks

Next generation networks must be capable of supporting a multitude of service providers that exploit an environment in which services are dynamically deployed and quickly adapted over a common heterogeneous physical infrastructure, according to varying and sometimes conflicting customer requirements. In this context, network management must become more flexible in order to cope with these emerging conditions. More specifically, new management architectures must offer service providers the freedom to manage their services according to their own policies and seamlessly extend management functionality as the only way to react to the introduction of new services. Based on a new business model that describes such an environment, we propose a policy-based management architecture that is extensible and operates in an active and programmable network. This management architecture is part of a new network architecture that was developed in the FAIN European Union research and development IST project.

Applying a Web-Service-Based Model to Dynamic Service-Deployment

Owing to the increase in both heterogeneity and complexity in todays networking systems, the need arises for an architecture for network-based services that provides flexibility and efficiency in the definition, deployment and execution of the services and, at the same time, takes care of the adaptability and evolution of such services. In this paper we present an approach that applies a component model to GT4, a Web-service-based grid environment, that enables the provision of parallel applications as QoS-aware (grid) services, whose performance characteristics may be dynamically negotiated between a client application and service providers. Our component model allows context dependencies to be explicitly expressed and dynamically managed with respect to the hosting environment, computational resources, and dependencies on other components. Our work can be seen as a first step towards a component-based programming model for service-oriented infrastructures utilizing standard Web-service technologies

A measurement framework for inter-domain SLA validation

Validating network services conformance to the guarantees given in an SLA becomes particularly challenging in inter-domain environments. We propose a system that enables the remote configuration of measurement processes across domains, allowing providers to perform coordinated non-intrusive inter-domain measurements. The system incorporates AAA functions for authorization of neighbor providers. Since the amount of result data can grow immense for non-intrusive measurements, we propose the use of sampling techniques to reduce the exported traffic load. The efficiency of the system has been validated through measurements obtained during a distributed gaming session.

Open programmable & active networks: a synthesis study

This paper reviews the characteristics and methodologies developed by the programmable network and active network communities as complementary approaches making a significant contribution to the development of new architectures. One such architecture is developed in the IST Project FAIN. FAIN is a three-year project, whose main task is to develop and validate an open, flexible, programmable and dependable network architecture based on novel active node concepts.

Dynamic Deployment and Configuration of Differentiated Services Using Active Networks

This paper presents the detailed components of the Future Active IP Networks (FAIN) [1] [2] [3] active node framework based on the novel Virtual Environment (VE) concept. It also presents the dynamic and autonomic deployment of differentiated services and the configuration capabilities thereof enabled. The FAIN node supports the dynamic deployment and instantiation of multiple active VEs, each one of them capable of hosting multiple Execution Environments (EE) and supporting communication among different EEs in the same node. The EEs may, in turn, be deployed and instantiated on demand thereby introducing new features and functionality in the node according to new requirements and arising needs. We tested the FAIN active network by developing and dynamically deploying a control EE, which was designed and tested for the QoS configuration of the Diffserv-enabled pan-European FAIN testbed [4]. The work presented in this paper was performed in the European Union research and development project under the Information Society Technologies programme.

Self-contextual network management system

Self-adaptation to changes in network context or self-contextual functionality refers to the capability of network nodes to dynamically reconfigure themselves in changing heterogeneous networking environments, in which new services and protocols will be rapidly created and deployed on demand. A novel programmable architecture, called the Future Active IP Networks (FAIN) node, is presented to address the described issues.

A unified framework for the negotiation and deployment of network services

The Internet network technology today does not allow a sufficient degree of autonomy to express user choices, constraints and preferences in order to dynamically obtain the most suitable services. One of the goals of Autonornic Communication is to produce self-managing network elements able to provide the desired services in an automated way. In this context, we propose an architecture to automate user-provider and provider-provider relationships, by converting the Internet into an electronic market space where the commodities to be traded are network services. After an agreement has been reached via agent-based automated negotiation mechanisms, network elements must be automatically configured in order to enforce the agreed conditions. This is achieved by generating commands to programmable network elements via open interfaces, The ultimate goal is enable fully automatic installation, configuration and monitoring of protocols or service components involving multiple ownership domains, while taking into account the constraints and preferences of users and providers.

Management and performance of virtual and execution environments in FAIN

Next generation network nodes are required to function within heterogeneous network environments, where new services and protocols are rapidly deployed on demand. In such emerging environments, traditional node architectures that offer a predetermined and preloaded set of services, are increasingly incapable of coping with these new requirements. Accordingly, there is a need for new node architectures that offer higher degrees of flexibility measured by their capability to extend the functionality of the node and change its behaviour on demand. This paper makes use of programmable and active network technologies as developed during the FAIN project, to present a novel secure active node architecture, called the FAIN node architecture, capable of supporting virtual environments (VEs) for the allocation of the required amount of resources in which new services are dynamically deployed together with their entire execution environments (EEs). To this end, multiple VEs and services run simultaneously and interact securely with the node resources and mechanisms through open interfaces and the FAIN node management framework. We also present the implementation of the FAIN node architecture and two case studies that demonstrate its extensibility aspects and novel features.