An integrated management environment for network resources and services

Abstract

Abstract-Technological and human factors have contributed to increase the complexity of the network management problem. Heterogeneity and globalization of network resources, on one hand, have increased user expectations for flexible and easy-to-use environments; on the other hand, they have suggested entirely novel ways to face the management problem. Several research efforts recognize the need for integrated solutions to manage both network resources and services in open, global, and untrusted environments. In addition, these solutions should permit the coexistence of different management models and should interoperate with legacy systems. In the paper, we define a general architecture based on a distributed processing environment (DPE) that offers a large set of facilities to the application level. We have developed the MESIS management environment shaped after the above architecture and its DPE facilities with the mobile agents technology. MESIS handles, in a uniform way, both resources and services, and focuses on two crucial properties: interoperability to overcome heterogeneity, and security to grant users safe and protected operations. The Agent Interoperability Facility supports compliance with CORBA-based management systems and with MASIF agent platforms. The Agent Security Facility provides authentication, integrity, privacy, authorization, and secure interoperation with CORBA systems.

QoS-aware accounting in mobile computing scenarios

“…AQuAM is built on top of the Secure and Open Mobile Agent (SOMA) * platform, exploits the SOMA facilities for the portable monitoring of distributed heterogeneous systems, and is organized in terms of accounting MAs that automatically follow the client roaming. AQuAM integrates with our previous research in network/systems/service management and mobile computing middlewares [4,5]. First deployment experiences and experimental evaluations point out how the joint adoption of portable QoS monitoring mechanisms and MA-based middleware components make AQuAM a highly dynamic, effective and portable environment to obtain innovative accounting solutions for the emerging mobility-enabled Internet scenario.…”

Active middleware for Internet Video on Demand: the QoS-aware routing solution in ubiQoS

“…† Adaptability. MAs simplify the adaptation of services in response to modifications in the availability of network resources at provision time [4]. For instance, MAs can locally monitor network resources and dynamically migrate where needed to obtain a global view of the system state.…”

“…For instance, intermediate nodes should offer their storage resources to realize distributed caches of popular Video on Demand (VoD) contents for clients and intermediate nodes within their locality, thus permitting to decrease the generated network traffic and the clientperceived latency. In addition, the participation of intermediate nodes can achieve scalability and complete decentralization, crucial requirements for service provision and management in the open and global Internet environment [4]. Scalability imposes management decisions locally to the involved resources and autonomous adaptation/ recovery operations on service components when and where there are changes in the availability of involved network resources.…”

“…This constraint is likely to produce a long process of acceptance and diffusion. As a general consideration, network-layer solutions work at a level where it is difficult to embed some of the functions required in QoS-enabled service provisioning, such as application-specific adaptation, secure billing and non-repudiable accounting [4].…”

Pervasive Accounting of Resource Consumption for Wireless Services with Adaptive QoS

“…The above aspects are particularly crucial when dealing with very resourcedemanding services, such as multimedia distribution. Some recent research work starts to recognize the need for middleware components that can dynamically downscale the Quality of Service (QoS) levels of Video on Demand (VoD) flows at the involved wireless access points over the fixed Internet infrastructure, in order to fit the characteristics of the specific provisioning environment, e.g., the screen resolu tion/size of current access devices, the expected average network bandwidth, and the user preferences [2,3]. In this context, there is an emerging need for accounting solutions allowing the enforcement of QoS-aware charging and pricing strategies, which consider not only the service access duration time, but also the usage of all distributed resources involved in (the possibly adapted) service provisioning.…”