Networking policy agents: mobile, intelligent, trusted and XML-based

Abstract

With policy-based networking, it is possible to define network policies based on user and application oriented business/service level objectives and to distribute the corresponding policy decisions/intelligence across the network consistently. One such policy framework is jointly defined, as an evolving industry standard, by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Working Groups (Policy Framework (PF) and Resource Allocation Protocol (RAP)) and the Directory Enabled Networks (DEN) Industry Group. Management and control, in the IETF framework, deploys a centralized client-server approach which has severe drawbacks with regard to scalability, flexibility and performance. The IETF framework does not scale well to support policy-based management of multi-domain networks. Policy rules, in the IETF framework, are static and have fixed semantics making rules difficult to adapt to change. This paper presents a new framework that overcomes these limitations. The paper describes an architecture that deploys trusted, intelligent and mobile agents in an open programmable networking framework. Policies, in the new framework, are extended to be dynamic and can be installed at network as well as at node (device) level. A policy rule is defined by a single event specification, an executable condition function and executable action function. Rules and interactions among agents are defined in XML notations and schemata. The use of XML for policy representation leads to semantically enriched policy components addressing a variety of functional requirements to a policy framework designed for an open communications market. An illustrative real-world example is also presented in the paper.