An Intelligent Network for Federated Testing of NetCentric Systems

Abstract

We will describe a dynamic federated autonomic networking system1 for the testing of netcentric systems across organizations. Using a suite of policy-based management software tools, our system can provide netcentric missions with self-configuring, self-debugging, self-healing, and self-protecting capabilities across end-to-end coalition networks. The novelty of our system originates from: (1) A multi-party dynamic policy negotiation algorithm and protocol for autonomous cross-organization negotiations on network resources; (2) A RDF/XML based language to enable automated understanding of network and application configurations across organizations; (3) A teachable, natural language policy capture system; (4) An advanced user interface tool for capturing and representing domain expert knowledge; and (5) A reasoning system for distributing and applying domain knowledge. This system has been developed for large-scale netcentric systems testing applications where the rapid configuration and management of dynamically changing netcentric test exercises is critical. Using a scenario from a real test exercise involving test ranges around the country, we have demonstrated in our testbed that we could reduce the debugging time for a network configuration problem from 6 hours, involving dozens of operators, to less than 2 seconds with minimal human involvement.