Policy-Based Management with active networks

A Policy-Based Management (PBM) system from IETF is responsible for resolving and enforcing policy rules in both the outsourcing and provisioning models so as to realize end-to-end Quality of Service (QoS) for all network connections. In this paper, we propose a novel architecture of the bandwidth brokers using active network technology. Active network paradigm empowers network nodes with the ability to manipulate data and program code as needed. In our proposed architecture, the Active Bandwidth Broker (ABB) framework distributes the policy control workload through the active nodes inside a policy domain. The Policy Decision Point in PBM is decomposed into two types of active application agents for traffic reduction and expedited decision processing. Moreover, the decision making agent is a mobile active program code that can move when the local network condition deteriorates. In order to verify the system performance of this proposed design, a working network prototype was constructed to demonstrate that the decision point can move to a comparatively low traffic region. As a consequence, the ABB system improves the overall performance when it is compared to PBM.