WP9 PHASE NUMBER

• Phase 1
• Phase 2

Phase 1

Motivation

Autonomic Management has recently emerged as an evolution of automated management. In terms of management functionality, systems can be characterised as unmanaged, managed, predictive, adaptive, autonomic. Adaptive closed-loop automated management is the first form of autonomic behaviour, with the ultimate target being fully distributed adaptive automated management, with relevant functionality built into the managed elements themselves. In this light, WP9 tries to integrate relevant know-how and approaches for both fixed/cellular and ad hoc/ubiquitous environments, answering questions and identifying key further research issues.

Relevant work is split into two parts: frameworks and technologies. Integration work in the area of frameworks addresses adaptive automated management approaches for fixed/cellular networks and distributed adaptive management for ad hoc / ubiquitous environments. Integration work in the area of technologies addresses policy-based management on one hand and emerging XML-based technologies and in particular Web Services as the unifying technology for future autonomic management systems.

The participants have expertise and have worked / are working in other research projects in all these areas. They complement well each other in the sense that they address various sub-problems from different perspectives. A key target will be the enumeration, harmonisation and integration of existing approaches addressed by the various participants and the identification of key further issues. The complementary expertise of the WP9 participants is evident from the description of their intended contributions that follow.

Objectives

This work package is part of the Research Activity and will address issues of autonomic management in the context of both fixed Next Generation Networks (e.g. QoS-enabled) and ad-hoc/ubiquitous environments. The key objective of this work package is to develop frameworks for the autonomic/automated management of both types of networks focusing on the required functionality that need to be present in such frameworks as well as the management technologies used to support the requirements of autonomic management of fixed and ad-hoc networks. In this context, the following aspects will be addressed:

• Automated Management of fixed Networks:
• Develop an overall automated management framework that will target resource optimisation and service fulfilment based on Traffic Engineering (TE) 
• Identify offline and dynamic traffic engineering approaches that can produce an optimal configuration of the network based on predicted traffic demand and network monitoring information 
• Consider scalable monitoring approaches to support configuration evolution and scalable collection of relevant network information
• Autonomic Management of ad-hoc/ubiquitous environments:

  • Develop an overall framework identifying the components that need to be present in order to support self-management of ad-hoc networks 
  • Investigate dynamic clustering algorithms so that cluster heads act as local managers and policy decision points as well as programmable approaches to support node capabilities alignment – self-organisation 
  • Investigate methodologies to support identification of malicious nodes that attempt denial of service attacks – self-protection
  • Context gathering, representation and dissemination, taking also into account resilience and efficiency, so that relevant decisions on self-protection and self-organisation are adaptive to it – self-adaptation
• Consider Policy-based Management as the management paradigm used to manage both fixed and adhoc networks and investigate issues such as policy refinement and conflict detection and resolution
• Investigate the use of emerging technologies for management of fixed/ad-hoc networks based XML-based technologies and in particular Web Services as the key unifying technology.

Tasks 

In order to achieve these objectives, the following tasks have been defined:

The work in this work package will start with the definition of the overall management frameworks for both fixed QoS-enabled IP and ad-hoc networks. The relevant components and their interactions will be specified supporting the required functionality to achieve autonomic management.

In the context of management of fixed QoS-enabled IP Networks, traffic engineering algorithms will be studied that aim at enhancing the network performance while at the same time optimizing the use of network resources. Issues such as resilience and fault tolerance will also be incorporated in the proposed algorithms. The TE approaches will cover both offline (time-dependent) and dynamic (network-state dependent) network optimisation for IP and MPLS-based networks. A sophisticated network monitoring mechanism will be developed so that the configuration of the network can be self-adapted with fast convergence time according to the data obtained from the monitoring system. The monitoring system should be able to report promptly, so that online TE mechanisms can be triggered for traffic re-optimisation.

In the context of autonomic management of ad-hoc networks, algorithms and mechanisms that will support self-* functionality. In order to support self-capability-alignment, we will study programmable mechanisms for node capability alignment, with required protocols and services diffused and activated; the decision on what to deploy will be based on application/service requirements, context and policies. Self-organisation will be addressed by specifying algorithms for optimally splitting the network into local regions to be managed (“clusters”) with cluster heads cooperating for overall cooperative network management. Security (selfprotection) issues will also by addressed by specifying methodologies for identifying malicious nodes that attempt to flood the network by observing traffic patterns, or simply identifying nodes that act in a selfish fashion by not cooperating e.g. not routing other nodes traffic. Finally, we will study algorithms for efficient context information gathering, processing/aggregation and dissemination, taking also into account resilience and efficiency, so that relevant decisions on self-protection and self-organisation are adaptive to it (self-adaptation).

Policy-based Management will be considered as an alternative management paradigm for both fixed and adhoc networks where network configuration will be expressed as a set of policy rules. In this case, it is becoming increasingly important to perform analysis of these policy specifications in order to detect and resolve potential inconsistencies. The policy/configuration analysis approaches will be based on reasoning techniques as identified in the literature. Finally this work package will examine XML-based technologies and in particular Web Services as the key unifying technology of the developed autonomic management frameworks. We will identify the key technological issues that have prevented integrated automated management until now and investigate relevant approaches and mechanisms, including selective and bulk data retrieval, data modelling to support scalability, scalable event management, transaction support for configuration management, including both object and XML-document based approaches and finally security, including authentication/authorisation and access control.

Partners

The following EMANICS partners are involved in this work package:

• INRIA LORIA (INRIA)
• University of Twente (UT)
• International University Bremen (IUB)
• Imperial College (IC)
• Universidad Polytechnica de Catalunya (UPC)
• University of Federal Armed Forces Munich (CETIM)
• Ludwig-Maximilian University Munich (LMU)
• KTH, Royal Institue of Technology (KTH)
• Oslo University College (HIO)
• University of Surrey (UniS)

Deliverables

The deliverables produced by this workpackage can be found in the 'Documents' section of the EMANICS web site.

Phase 2

Objectives

This work-package is part of the research activity and will address issues of autonomic management. Building on the collaborative work performed by the participating partners in the first phase, the second phase will identify emerging approaches for autonomic management,study them and propose solutions to tackle potential problems. In parallel, one of the key objectives of this work-package will be to work on certain aspects of autonomic management that were introduced in the first phase. In this respect, the following aspects will be addressed:

• Intra and Inter-Domain Autonomic Management of Fixed Networks

• Automated inter-domain QoS management

• Self-management of MPλS optical networks

• Automated intra- and inter-domain fault-management i.e., service recovery, resilience

• Autonomic management of ubiquitous environments

• Context-awareness for self-management of ubiquitous environments using ontologies

• Adaptive distributed management (i.e., incorporating management patterns in cfengine)

• Distributed self-management for wireless and mesh networks

•     Policy-based management

• Monitoring, policy representation, refinement, analysis etc.

•     Emerging paradigms for autonomic network management

• Fundamentals of P2P for network management (i.e., incentives, collaboration)

• P2P technologies for network management

• Management of P2P environments

WP9 will follow an open-call model to select joint proposals and allocate funds accordingly.

Description of work

T9.1: Intra and Inter-Domain Autonomic Management of Fixed Networks

Building on the frameworks for autonomic management of fixed networks presented in the first phase of this work-package, work for the second phase will expand the research realm to address the complexities involved in Inter-domain issues. A case study of inter-domain QoS automated management will receive collaborative interest. Furthermore, intra-domain issues will continue to be investigated. A case-study of particular interest, namely optical networks and their self-management, will be studied. Finally, automated intra- and inter-domain fault management for service recovery and resilience is another research aspect of this task

T9.2: Autonomic management of ubiquitous environments

Anomaly behaviour in monitoring context information will be one of the topics of interest for this research task. Context management will also be addressed, with the focus being on ontologies describing the context information. The work that begun in the first phase on distributed autonomics by incorporating management patterns in cfengine will be expanded to cover the wider area of adaptive distributed management. Correspondingly, distributed self-management of MANETs that was presented in the first phase will continue to be addressed, incorporating studies on wireless and mesh networks to better cover this research domain.

T9.3: Policy-based autonomic management

Policy-based management will be considered as an alternative management paradigm for both fixed networks and wireless ubiquitous environments, considering the specific requirements of each environment. Network monitoring to provide accurate policy triggering information is important, while policy representation, refinement and analysis are of paramount importance in order to detect and resolve potential inconsistencies in dynamic co-operative environments.

T9.4: Peer-to-peer approaches for autonomic network management

There has been an increasing research interest towards P2P principles and technologies for autonomic network management. The partners of EMANICS are collaboratively going to be working on various aspects of P2P autonomic network management.

PARTNERS

The following EMANICS partners are involved in this work package:

• INRIA LORIA (INRIA)
• University of Twente (UT)
• International University Bremen (IUB)
• Imperial College (IC)
• Universidad Polytechnica de Catalunya (UPC)
• University of Federal Armed Forces Munich (CETIM)
• Ludwig-Maximilian University Munich (LMU)
• KTH, Royal Institue of Technology (KTH)
• Oslo University College (HIO)
• University of Surrey (UniS)
• University of Zurich (UNIZH) (Burkhard Stiller)

Deliverables