ABB: Active bandwidth broker

In this paper, we shall discuss a novel design on the policy-based management for the Internet. This design deploys the concept of active networking. As opposed to the traditional network design, active network empowers network node with the ability to manipulate data and program code in packets, and configure the network properties according to the needs of different applications. The policy-based management can control network routers in order to realize end-to-end Quality of Service (QoS), such as differentiated and integrated services, across the Internet. For the moment, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has defined the framework of the policy-based management [3]. It employs a simple client/server model that uses Common Open Policy Service (COPS) [1] protocol to facilitate policy management and control. Our design of Active Bandwidth Broker (ABB) belongs to an active application. Our goals are to distribute centralized workload of the policy-based management over multiple active nodes in the active networks, introduce mobility of the bandwidth brokers, and allows load sharing to the policy-based management. This results a network-wide intelligent, highly available, and consistent QoS control that allows performance protection for voice, video and Internet business application while reducing costs for growing networks.